


The Far Shore

by aban_asaara



Series: Strange Places: Fenris and Amabel Hawke [13]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, F/M, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Miscarriage, Mutual Pining, Pirates, Post-Canon, Qunari, Rivain (Dragon Age), Rivaini Seers, Romance, Sexual Content, Temporary Character Death, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:54:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 81,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21661141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/pseuds/aban_asaara
Summary: In the wake of the Kirkwall rebellion, Hawke and Fenris flee to Rivain, as far away from the Chantry’s grasp as possible. But with a price on the former Champion’s head, nowhere in Thedas is safe.(On hiatus.)
Relationships: Fenris/Female Hawke, Isabela/Various
Series: Strange Places: Fenris and Amabel Hawke [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/775176
Comments: 518
Kudos: 161





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Added 2021/02/03: I vastly underestimated the amount of work editing my rough draft would take, and 2020 did a number on my mental health and by extension, my motivation to work on this fic. I still intend to get it finished, but as is probably obvious by now I can't guarantee consistent or regular updates. I suggest bookmarking or subscribing to get notified when I get around to updating it. Thank you so, so much to everyone who's read and supported me until now. <3
> 
> -
> 
> The very first outline for this fic was written out in summer 2017, and I won NaNo for the first time that same year with the first draft. Two years, one rewrite and several new chapters later, I’m finally ready to share this story. It takes place in Rivain, a setting I always found intriguing; since very little is known about it canonically, I built large swaths of the world from the ground up and created several original characters to inhabit it. For this reason I think there’s more of me in this work than any other I’ve shared so far, and I can only hope you will love the final result even half as much as I do.
> 
> Many, many thanks to [theherocomplex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex), without whom this story would be nowhere near as good and nowhere near finished, to [Sasskarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasskarian) for her support and for helping me shape the plot in its early stages, to [hollyand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollyand) for being such a kind and supportive friend, and to all my writer friends on Discord for their encouragement and everyone who’s shown interest in this over the past two years. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. <3
> 
> A general warning for the story: please note that various characters drink and smoke (both tobacco and drugs), that sexual situations are mentioned, and that coarse language (including gendered and in-universe slurs) is used throughout the fic. I will warn for more specific or explicit content in the chapter notes, but several chapters contain at least one of these elements.
> 
> And on that note: onwards!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prologue is told from an OC’s POV as I wanted to introduce a few elements before hitting the main storyline, but the rest of the fic features Hawke, Fenris, and Isabela as the protagonists and POV characters. :D

Moon marked and touched by sun  
my magic is unwritten  
but when the sea turns back  
it will leave my shape behind.  
I seek no favor  
untouched by blood  
unrelenting as the curse of love  
permanent as my errors  
or my pride  
I do not mix  
love with pity  
nor hate with scorn  
and if you would know me  
look into the entrails of Uranus  
where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell  
within my birth nor my divinities  
who am ageless and half-grown  
and still seeking  
my sisters  
witches in Dahomey  
wear me inside their coiled cloths  
as our mother did  
mourning.

I have been woman  
for a long time  
beware my smile  
I am treacherous with old magic  
and the noon’s new fury  
with all your wide futures  
promised  
I am  
woman  
and not white.

— _A Woman Speaks_ , Audre Lorde

And as I cannot waking meet him,  
May I meet him in my dream.

—Unattributed, compiled in the _Man’yōshū_ cir. AD 759.

The tattoos hurt the least.

Oh, they hurt: Rivella’s needle is fire, and the relief all too fleeting when she wipes the excess ink and blood beading on Subira’s brow. “Stop _squirming_ ,” Rivella huffs, “or I better not hear you complain afterwards if I slip up.”

So Subira closes her eyes and focuses on her breathing, on the circle of women sitting around her with their hands linked—Ziyanda’s, callused and firm and smelling of hari leaves, N’na’s, fragile as bird bones wrapped in old vellum. A sea-sharp wind blows through the lattice of the windows, teasing the plumes of burning embrium above her. Her guide likes the smell of burning embrium, and the sweet high song of lyrium, and the taste of salt crystals on the tongue, aniseed tea brewed too strong and raw slices of bitter melon. Subira used to hate bitter melon, but she’s carried Wisdom in the hollow of her breasts for twelve moons now, and she’s long forgotten what she found so irksome about it.

Flicker of a thought, under the prickling burn of the needle: will she hate bitter melon again, once she’s let go? Who will she be, without Wisdom to guide her steps?

The tears trickling down her temples are not just for pain.

Her tattoos done, Subira takes her place among the seers. She sits cross-legged on a floor cushion inside the silk of the hanging canopy, and just has time to catch her reflection in the bowl of hammered silver before the lyrium is poured into it. She looks pretty—always has, and she has the good fortune of knowing it. Even prettier now, with the tattoos. Her skin hums with the almost pleasant burn of fresh ink, the patterns shimmering like mother of pearl against her dark skin: swirls of water on her hands and a diamond star on her brow, to seal some of Wisdom’s magic in the thin slice of space where skin turns to blood, and twin flowers on the apples of her cheeks, just for the beauty of it.

The bowl is passed from hand to hand, and each woman drinks from it. The lyrium rolls thick and tangy down Subira’s tongue, and power crackles through her veins. The taste becomes what she wills it, she discovered as an apprentice, and now it tastes of citrus, only a faint metallic aftertaste peering through sweet oranges. She drains the bowl, returns it to the table amidst the offerings she chose, as easily as if they’d been for herself: candied anise, sprigs of bruised coriander, pretty seashells gathered on the shore just outside the city. These are parting gifts, thank-you gifts. After this last meeting Subira will wear the multicoloured beads of an initiate, and Wisdom will return home to the Fade.

Now the seers are humming, low breathy notes swirling together in the warm, still air inside the canopy. The wind twins its voice to theirs just outside the sheer silk, high and playful; without it, Subira would have forgotten the ritual room and the four Templars standing in its corners. A precaution, nothing more. She’s heard that on rare occasions, something will follow an initiate out of the Fade; rarer yet, it will sneak past the elders’ charms and spells. But Knight-Commander Badr trusts her; he smiled when she came into the room, and touched his closed fist to his heart. Wisdom taught her well, and Subira will emerge from the emerald waters of the Fade a seer, privy to the age-old secrets of her foremothers.

The air thickens within the tumble of silk. Wreaths of half-formed spells spiral about them, languid as incense smoke, as the seers feed the ritual their magic. Here they are, between all things: halfway to heaven, the Circle tower the highest point this side of the Bay. The lyrium thrums inside her veins; Wisdom curls feather-soft beneath her breastbone, and the edges of the waking realm turn liquid, till Subira knows not where it starts and where she ends.

Letting go is the hard part: like opening your fingers around the handhold and welcoming the headlong drop.

Falling is easy.

She remembers a time when the Fade scared her. The shadows, the whispers, the way nothing stays as it should. Paths winking out of existence, sometimes right under her feet. Jerking awake, embarrassed. In tears, sometimes. But she’s been here with Rivella, with N’na, with Espie. With Wisdom. She’s learned to walk the secret paths of the Fade, and she takes her first step now without fear, down the bright shimmering ribbon unwinding before her.

Dairsmuid, she knows at once. There is no horizon to mark the seam of sea and sky, no above and no under; the towers and terracotta roofs are lined up flat as a paper garland, cobbled streets unfurling ever upwards, but she recognizes her city all the same. The light has a strange, watery slant to it, and the angle makes no sense, like she’s looking up at the city from the bottom of the Bay. And maybe she is: almond-shaped shadows drift high above her, trails of water purling in their wake. For a while she simply marvels at the sheer impossibility of it, watching ships sail among the shingled rooftops.

One shape slips past the others despite its size. Not just fast. _Purposeful_ , Subira thinks without knowing why.

 _Pay attention_ , a voice whispers from within, through the swishing sound of water all around her. _This is important_.

Her eyes track the hull as it sails above her. A moon waning black against wayward streams of light, or a lemon, or a cowrie shell or—

Or an eye.

And it’s staring back.

Not a ship, Subira realizes with a sudden hard slam of terror, but an eye, a gigantic, grotesque _eye_. Tendrils of wake water spread out from the center like flames, stretching as the thing draws closer. She tries to take a step back, but she can’t because she’s at the bottom of the bloody _Bay_ , a sea’s worth of water crushing her while that horrible, horrible _eye_ fills hers, while she thrashes and begs and _drowns_ —

She remembers to let go. She falls out of the sea and into the sky, and the Veil parts around her as she takes a great gulping breath that tastes of embrium smoke and saltwater.

The seers are staring at her, waiting. “What did you see, child?” N’na asks after a beat.

The elder’s grip is iron. Subira tugs her hand free, then winces at her own rudeness. “Nothing,” she stammers. The blood rushes to her cheeks, setting her new tattoos aflame again. “I saw nothing.”

She stumbles out of the ritual room in a daze. Her body feels a size too large now, without Wisdom’s rippling warmth filling the empty spaces between her bones. She can’t remember taking refuge on the balcony ringing the spire, but here she is now, the harbour stretching below the balustrade, ships bobbing along the pale strip of the docks. Ferries, she sees. Fishing junks, merchant ships, the odd coastguard vessel streaming along the curve of Rialto Bay. From this far up, they look fragile as toys, masts the size of toothpicks.

Subira shudders, gropes inwards for Wisdom’s comforting presence. Finds none.

That’s not how she wanted to say goodbye.

“You saw them, too, didn’t you?”

First Enchanter Rivella is just a silhouette before the buttery glow of the doorway, but Subira knows that deep, rough-edged voice at once. _Them?_ she wants to ask, but she also doesn’t want to _know_ , so she turns back to the Bay. “I don’t know what I saw,” she mutters instead.

The shame burns hotter than her tattoos now. Can she still become a seer, after claiming her Sight has failed?

Rivella leans against the balustrade, pipe in hand, and perfect rings of smoke float from her lips. “We rarely do. Not till after.”

 _Then what’s the point?_ Subira almost asks, but she bites down the question. For more than half her life now she’s known she’d become a seer, ever since the day she made the grounds of the royal palace bloom with wild tumbles of bougainvillea on a whim. She’s never once wondered about the _point_ of the Sight, though, and it seems an egregious omission, now that she’s free to wander the Fade on her own.

Inside the tower, the voices are low, hushed; the feast to be thrown in her honour has yet to start. A ship’s bell tolls, somewhere in the harbour. Dairsmuid never sleeps: it glimmers now, speckled with the glow of lanterns and torches as the last faint strips of sunset vanish behind the curve of the sea. A swell of something fierce—love, maybe, and fear, for this city she’s known all her life—rises from the deep and threatens to swallow her.

Subira lifts one finger and draws a shape in the air: an eye, fat coils straggling around it like crazed sunrays.

No surprise on Rivella’s face. Just the merest pinch of her mouth, before she brings her pipe to her lips again. “Change is in the offing, Subira, and you are as a lookout on a ship,” she says at last, her voice barely above a whisper. In the falling night, the bold set of her face looks softer, almost brittle. “Knowing whence it comes may be what saves us in the end.”

Subira considers the words for a moment. “I understand,” she whispers in answer.

The thought is far from comforting, but Rivella smiles, an all too rare smile, and the claws around Subira’s heart loosen their hold. “Now, are you coming or do I need to drag you inside? Ziyanda can only keep the apprentices away from the food for so long.”

The laughter shakes itself free of its own will. Subira reaches for the beads resting on her breastbone, where an elated rush fills her chest like fresh water from a spring. She’s a _seer_ now, trusted to walk the Fade at will and confer with spirits. If Rivella and the others had not deemed her ready, she’d be inside with the apprentices, stomping her feet and clutching her stomach as the aromas of sauces and spices drift from the kitchen. Whatever lies ahead, she can face it. She must.

Subira throws one last look at the long line of ships fringing the harbour, then follows Rivella back into the soft golden light of the Circle tower.


	2. Isabela

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reversed Wheel of Fortune tarot card for Isabela painted by the amazingly talented [Eleonor Piteira](https://eleonorpiteira.tumblr.com/), who was very patient with me and a pleasure to work with! <3 You can view all three cards for this fic [here](https://eleonorpiteira.tumblr.com/post/189497548854/there-is-no-joy-except-that-which-we-make-for)!

**Part I: Llomerryn**

“And here I thought we’d make a raider out of you, Hawke,” Isabela says over the sound of Hawke retching. “Your bed rocks a whole lot harder than my ship, as I recall.”

That doesn’t even earn her a half-hearted glare from Fenris. He stands bent over Hawke, rubbing slow circles in the hollow of her shoulder blades. After five days at sea, the two of them have it down to an art now: Hawke makes her way to the rail curled around her stomach, and Fenris holds the hair out of her face while she pukes. Isabela’s given up hope she’ll ever get her sea legs, and the crew has long grown bored with teasing her.

A shame, really. Hawke’s about as useful as a large rock on a ship, lubber that she is, but Isabela could use a man like Fenris before the mast. He already holds his own on deck now, trimming the yards and manning the capstan bars with the rest of the crew. Bastard’s already mastered a few knots, too, but Hawke’s a lost cause.

Hard to believe this is the most wanted woman in Thedas: the erstwhile Champion of Kirkwall, folded over the rail like wet laundry on a clothesline. _Got to feed the fish_ , she says every time, though water and bile must make for meager fare. At least she’s managed to keep down some salted pork and a few slices of apple today, but odds are it’s all dribbling down the hull of the _Pearl Oyster_ now.

Isabela lovingly pats the worn head of a belaying pin. “She’s going to need a new coat of paint at this rate,” she says.

Fenris makes a pensive noise. “No, she has always been this pale.”

She guffaws, taken aback. The quirk of his mouth is absentminded, though, and the crease between his eyebrows sticks in place, but a familiar, valiant spark brightens Hawke’s wet eyes at the sound of his voice.

“It’s a curse. Between the sunburns and the seasickness I’ve really brought down the Maker’s wrath upon me,” she sighs, then rests her cheek on the rail and closes her eyes. “Think it’s that time I dropped Mother’s favourite saucer and blamed Carver instead? Or all those years spent living in rapturous sin, maybe?”

“If you keep calling it _rapturous_ you will never get the Maker on your side,” Fenris replies, handing her a waterskin.

“Besides, if it were that, sweet thing,” Isabela says, “I’d have long puked my guts out. _Literally_.”

“The saucer, then. I knew it.” Hawke rinses her mouth with a palmful of water, then pushes herself off the rail. Fenris catches her elbow and guides her to the quarterdeck stairs, Hawke settling between his knees on the swabbed steps. Her head lolls back against his chest as he closes his cloak around the two of them, and together they sit under the billowing sails of the mizzen. The night folds onto itself, spinning itself tight around them; for a moment Isabela feels like she’s outside looking in, till Hawke catches her eye and smiles.

It’s been almost three years since Kirkwall, but that doesn’t matter. Time always does strange things around Hawke, coils onto itself and shrinks. Talk to her one night and first thing you know it’s morning, the tavern floor ribbed with sunlight and your coinpurse empty but your belly’s full and you’ve never laughed so hard in your life. Those three years crumbled to dust the instant Isabela spotted Hawke and Fenris in that dodgy Denerim dockside inn: beautiful as ever, the both of them, sharp and hard as a set of well-crafted daggers.

Maker’s _balls_ , but she’s missed them. Keep them both strapped to her thigh if she could.

Isabela pulls the flask of rum from her belt and gives it a shake in their direction. Hawke grimaces, but Fenris helps himself to a few sips, returning the flask with an appreciative nod. He better—this is fine stuff, straight from the cellar of one Prince Hortensio Calabra. Isabela drinks, wondering idly if he’s noticed the missing casks yet, then leans back against the rail and closes her eyes; sweet fire searing its way down her throat, brisk, briny wind on her face. A few members of her crew are playing tug-of-war with Hawke’s old mabari and taking bets, somewhere forward, and every once in a while the helmsman’s whistling drifts down to them as he steers the wheel on the quarterdeck above—some Marcher ditty, by the sound of it. The sails tug on their yards, the wood creaks, and the sea heaves with a thousand spuming sighs at once.

Predictably, Hawke’s the one to break the silence. She fishes a piece of buttermint from her pocket and pops it into her mouth—Fenris must’ve won them off Declan at diamondback, because Declan never shares. “Looks like I’ll have to bury my dream of becoming a seafaring queen, after all,” she says, shoulders lifting with a sigh. “Put an end to my fearsome reign.”

A barb of something sharp deep inside Isabela, easily deflected. It veers off into the dark and vanishes. “Nonsense. Everyone gets their sea legs after a few days.”

“It _has_ been a few days,” Fenris says.

Maker’s Bark woofs, and laughter scatters across the deck; one of her crew must’ve embarrassed himself. “And go where, exactly? Nowhere better than the open sea if you want to keep away from the Chantry. I thought that was the whole _point_.”

“Well, sure, but at this point I’ll gladly turn myself in if it means not heaving my food right back up every time,” Hawke says, rolling the mint around her cheek. “I could always join the Wardens, I suppose. Would be worth it just for my brother’s face.”

“You do that, then. Maybe the pointless prattle will drive the darkspawn back underground.”

“No one’s joining the Wardens,” Fenris says mildly. Then, to Isabela: “The nearest port is in Rivain, isn’t it?”

The feigned nonchalance does it: she’s pissed off now, her quiet ruined. “You, in Rivain? Don’t make me laugh.” Fenris flicks one dark eyebrow; Hawke blinks, finally catching on. If this were her crew, Isabela would send them off to swab the already clean deck for disturbing their captain’s peace, but they’re her friends, and the twin expressions of wounded incredulity on their faces just make her feel like shit. “I mean, they _revere_ mages there,” she says with a vague gesture. “Some can hardly put on their smalls without a seer telling them which leg goes first.”

She expects Fenris to argue, but to her surprise, the barest curve slants his mouth instead. “Just what we need,” he says. “More people putting stock into whatever Hawke has to say.”

“I admit I’m far from being an authority on putting smallclothes on,” Hawke starts, a smile lighting up her drawn face. “They rather tend to come _off_ in my presence.”

Isabela snorts despite herself. “As if you could take any more jiggling right now,” she retorts. Fenris laughs, and just like that, the tension in the air ripples loose again. He draws the cloak tighter around Hawke and presses a kiss to her neck, and she lifts one shoulder to her ear with a sweet flutter of a laugh that sends warmth flooding Isabela’s innards.

Then Hawke looks at her, blue eyes turned colourless in the glimmer of the ship’s lanterns, laughter lingering at the corners of her mouth. “Your mother was a fortune teller, wasn’t she?”

“A _seer_ ,” Isabela corrects her, waggling a reproachful finger. “Don’t you go calling them fortune tellers, or you’ll never hear the end of it. Not that it would’ve made _Madam Hari_ ”—she rolls her eyes at her mother’s moniker—“any less of a crook.”

“She was no mage, then?” Fenris asks. “And people fell for it?”

“People are _very_ good at believing what they want. Tell them there’s love or coin in their future, and they won’t question the rest.” At least till the day the villagers showed up with some poor kid bitten by a sea snake, and Hari slapped some elfroot on the oozing puncture marks before slipping out the backdoor of their hut, Isabela in tow. She fights to keep the smile on her face. “Bet I could do it, if I ever tired of sailing.”

“As if,” Hawke retorts, grinning. “Cross your palm with silver?”

There’s the irresistible glint of a challenge in her eyes. Isabela makes her way to the quarterdeck stairs and squeezes herself next to Hawke on the narrow step, Fenris’s knee folded between them. This close, she can smell the mint on Hawke’s breath and the faintest tinge of lyrium weaving itself into the sea breeze, and the familiarity of it hits her like a punch to the gut. For a moment she’s back in the Hanged Man, nostrils filled with the scent of old wood and spilled ale and candlewax, Hawke’s laughter clear in her ear and playing cards worn smooth under her fingers. A lifetime ago now, it feels like.

She offers her upturned palm and waggles her fingers. Hawke rummages through her pockets, biting the inside of her cheeks but not quite hiding her amusement. “I have love, and a whole lot of coin sitting in the coffers of the Merchants Guild,” she says, one hand emerging from the green folds of Fenris’s cloak to drop a few silvers in Isabela’s palm. “You’ll have to find something else.”

Isabela unties the kerchief from around her hair and shakes her curls to freedom, then takes both of Hawke’s hands in hers. She knows what Hari would’ve noticed first: no scars or calluses, no dirt under her fingernails, no sunburns, not even the golden halo of a southern expatriate gone north; just the pale, cold hands of an ill traveler. The accent might’ve thrown her: Fereldan, maybe, but with a distinctive Marcher inflection, too refined for your typical dog lord and just rough enough around the edges to be unaffected. No rings on her fingers: no jewelry, in fact, just a tousled braid coming loose over her shoulder, tied with a scrap of ribbon.

A noblewoman on the run, Hari would’ve guessed. Maybe even an escaped Circle mage. She wouldn’t be too far off the mark.

Oh, and how she’d twist that knife. Anything for a handful of coin, and Hawke just gullible enough to buy the amulets and concoctions her mother would’ve sold her. _It’s not thieving, Naishe_ , she’d say, and her mother’s voice rises from her memory along with the clink of coin and cowrie shells. _They want to believe: they want hope, and that’s what we give them_.

Isabela closes her eyes and wraps her hands around Hawke’s to warm them up, trying to pass off whatever might’ve flitted across her face as her fortune teller act. This is more thought than she’s given her mother in years, and more than the bitch ever deserved.

“I see,” she starts, pitching her voice low, “I see movement.”

Fenris snorts. “On a ship? Impressive.”

“Shush, you. This very voyage, yes, but I also see a storm or two for you on the horizon.” A safe bet, as far as Hawke is concerned, but the amused smile on her face dims: the barest flicker, but Hari would’ve pounced. It’s not just the seasickness that’s taking its toll on her. “Lucky for you, there’s quite the steadying force to weather you through it,” Isabela adds, her gaze cutting to Fenris, and just that is enough to send the smile rippling bright again across Hawke’s face. Even after three years, she’s making it so damned _easy_.

Fenris shifts to prop himself up on one elbow, the thick wool of his cloak brushing Isabela’s wrist. “Someone has to. Where would you be otherwise?”

Hawke grins. “Still in Kirkwall, lying face down on the ground.”

“I am fairly certain Seneschal Bran would have scraped you off by now,” he replies, chuckling.

Isabela grimaces at the memory of the seneschal’s permanent scowl and underwhelming performance in the sack. “If Bran knows whatʼs good for him, heʼs long emptied the Keepʼs coffers and moved into the Rose. And that’s my point: to every ship its harbour, if you know what I mean. You’re looking for home, but it’s only the place that changes. Remember this.”

Fenris catches her eye, not quite smiling. He obviously expected her to say something silly or saucy, and she probably should’ve, but Hawke is smiling, and there’s a bit more colour to her cheeks now. “Thank you,” she says, something shy curling the edges of her voice. “That was really sweet.”

“Cloying, you mean. I need to wash down that saccharine taste,” Isabela retorts, letting go of Hawke’s hands to twist the cap off her flask. “Oh, but I almost forgot the most important part: if you don’t buy this overpriced trinket and come back to have the protective wards on it reforged every fortnight, terrible, _terrible_ things will happen. And that’s how my dear mother swindled a village for the better part of two years.” A mouthful of rum chases the bitterness away. Some of it, at least. “You, though,” she says, handing Fenris the flask, “ _you’d_ be a challenge.”

“Oh, yes, do him too,” Hawke exclaims.

Isabela laughs. “With pleasure, sweet thing,” she says with a wink.

Fenris rolls his eyes as he brings the flask to his lips, but grudgingly stretches his hand out to her. It’s warm in hers, warmer than she expected, the lyrium brands unfurling in bright lines under the shivering glow of the lantern. She quirks one corner of her mouth. “Here, I’ll read the lines of your hand,” she offers, somehow not wanting to tear her gaze away.

“Very funny,” he huffs.

“Come on, I’m making it all up anyway,” she sighs. Fenris relents, his fingers relaxing in her hand. The markings fan out at the wrist, right at the cuff of his sleeve, then cut straight across his palm to disappear under his fingernails. They’d look like tattoos, except the lines are still as stark as they were ten years ago when she first met him, and no tattoo she’s ever seen has that quicksilver sheen to it, not even among the Dalish with their _vallaslin_.

Not a drop of magic in her veins, and even she can feel the hum of dormant power in the space between their fingers.

She turns his hand over in the lantern light. Scuffed knuckles, a thin, long-healed scar running straight across the first joints. His fingernails are trimmed short, the thumbnail ripped to the quick, and for a second she indulges in the heady vision of those sword calluses on Hawke’s soft, tender flesh.

Isabela has no idea what Hari would’ve made of him. She decides she doesn’t care. “This is your heart line,” she starts, pointing to the line running below his fingers. Hawke huddles closer. “When it starts under your forefinger like this, that means you’re content with your love life.”

Hawke narrows her eyes at him. “Just content?”

“Well. It is adequate, I suppose,” he replies with a crooked smile. Hawke sticks her tongue out at him.

“Now this break in your fate line here, that’s some change of direction, like, oh, I don’t know, killing your master and escaping a lifetime of slavery. And see how the curve of your life line is quite pronounced? That’s your energy … including your _sexual_ energy,” Isabela finishes, waggling her eyebrows for effect.

Hawke breaks into a mischievous grin. “It’s adequate, I guess,” she quips.

The tips of Fenris’s ears flush red at that, and Isabela bursts out laughing. “Look here: every crease on your fate line is Hawke getting one up on you,” she says, getting a sheepish laugh out of him. “But here’s where it gets _really_ interesting: if the combined lengths of your heart, head and life lines are longer than your foot, well …”

He leans forward, squinting at his own palm. “Well?”

“Well, _that_ means Hawke’s a lucky bitch,” Isabela says, flicking him on the forehead with one finger.

The moment is perfect, the outrage stark on Fenris’s face as he rubs the space between his eyebrows and Hawke’s laughter tumbling crisp in the night. “That I am,” she says, spoken like a line from the Chant, then leans back against him with her eyes closed and her head tucked under his chin, the sails above them milky as starlight and a spray of seawater glittering in the lanterns.

It’s perfect, and Isabela hates it, because Hawke sighs and then it’s gone, scattered like sea foam on the shore. “Maker, if only I weren’t seasick,” she says, to no one in particular.

“It will _pass_ ,” Isabela says as if she could will it.

No one says anything after that. After a few long minutes, Hawke’s teeth start chattering, and Fenris helps her to her feet and leads her to the companionway. Isabela watches as they exchange a few words with the rest of the crew, Hawke dropping on one knee to give her hound’s jowls a vigorous rub, then disappear together into the dark hatch.

Another swallow of rum wards off the lashing wind. She props herself up on her elbows and crosses her legs at the ankles, not ready to retreat to her cabin yet. Fragments of her crew’s voices wash up to her; her mind leaps up to catch them, but she puts no effort in the attempt, and they flit past her like some unknown tongue. Both sea and sky are black as ink, only the spattering of stars showing where one ends and the other begins. Isabela closes her eyes, letting the creaks and groans of the hull and the rustling sails rock her like a babe in the cradle.

Her crew, her ship, _her_ sea—yet for one heartbeat, she feels hollow, sagging like a luffing sail.

Fenris returns alone. The tug-of-war contest is over, and the crew has started retreating below deck. Maker’s Bark follows him, a moist strip of pink tongue lolling out of his mouth, then curls up at the bottom of the quarterdeck stairs as Fenris sits next to Isabela.

They sit shoulder to shoulder, passing the flask of rum between them till they’ve drained it. “Hawke cannot take much more of this,” he says then. “We need to dock somewhere, and soon.”

“And then what?” She means it as a challenge, but there’s no edge to her words. Her senses have gone pleasantly dull, the world watercolour-soft around her.

“I meant it, about Rivain. She will not be safe anywhere the Chantry can find her. If I have to eat fish for every meal and endure hedge mages for neighbours, then so be it.”

“Huh,” she says, then looks up at the blurred, torchlit web of the rigging overhead and chuckles. “That’s love.”

He doesn’t answer, but the shadow of a blush creeps up his cheeks as he glances towards the companionway. His years with Hawke have softened him, if you know where to look: something more supple in the corners of his mouth, less of that tension about the shoulders, like a shiver that never comes. Isabela’s even spotted them in their berths once, holding hands as their hammocks rocked with the waves. _Now_ there’s _something to make you seasick_ , she thought, watching them sleep under the sway of the smoky lamp overhead, the old mabari hound curled under them.

“Fenris,” she says before she can stop herself. “What happened in Ferelden?”

The line of his body goes stiff. He crosses his arms over his chest, and she’s surprised he answers at all. “The Templars happened, that’s what.”

The lines overhead swell into a rust-coloured tangle when she lets her eyes go unfocused, a few bright stars stretching into pale spikes. “Did they know it was her? The Champion, I mean?”

“I did not think to ask,” he answers with a shrug.

Isabela doesn’t insist. She tucks her hands into her armpits to warm them up, while the _Pearl Oyster_ sways on the black sheet of the Amaranthine. His voice, when he speaks again, takes her by surprise: “I let my guard down, and she almost paid for it.”

He’s far away, she sees now, eyebrows pinched together over glassy green eyes. Images run through her mind: Hawke, defenceless, the fiery roar of her magic silenced to a whimper and a Templar blade at her throat, lyrium flashing pale on dark spatters as Fenris tears the still-beating hearts out of their plated chests.

“She’s fine, though,” Isabela says, not quite a question, not quite wanting to know. “Isn’t she?”

Another shrug. “We had to leave Ferelden,” he says, and there’s his shame, caustic enough to eat through the wall he’s raised around it.

Isabela will never understand. _This_ is her home, the wide open sea and the wind in her sails, not whatever roof happens to be over her head. Maybe she’d get it, if instead of having been married off to a stranger she’d been raised on a farm by doting parents, gathering ripe tomatoes from the garden and shit-caked eggs from under clucking hens, but she gets itchy feet just thinking about it. Why they’d wish the tedium of that existence upon themselves, she doesnʼt know.

The thought’s unfair. Hawke was an apostate first, then a refugee on top of it, and now wanted for her part in a plot she really had very little to do with. Try explaining that to a bunch of righteous zealots, though. What Hawke wants, more than anything, is to stop running.

And what Fenris wants, more than anything, is to give her that chance.

_Balls_.

“Llomerryn is a day away,” Isabela relents. They caught a prize on the Fereldan coast of the Amaranthine, but once divided the shares didn’t amount to much, and she was hoping to catch another on the mouth of Rialto Bay to make it worth her while. “We could sell our haul at the market there, I suppose.”

Fenris looks at her, his expression guarded. “You ‘suppose’?”

“Llomerryn isn’t exactly the sort of place where one takes a health retreat, you know. And you want to get my crew to dock somewhere, you convince them.”

“I can do that.”

He says it so solemnly Isabela has to laugh. “I need them unmaimed, if we’re to make it there in the first place.”

That makes him laugh too, that low rumble deep enough to shake you loose. “Thank you,” he says, the corners of his mouth still curled up.

“Anything for those pretty eyes for yours,” she replies, then watches him make his way back to the companionway again with Maker’s Bark on his heel, the silver of his hair scalded gold under the warm glow of the lanterns. She waits till he’s gone, till the cold stops being bracing and becomes unpleasant instead, then returns to the maps and sextant in her cabin to trace a course to Llomerryn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to properly set the scene with this first chapter, but the next chapter will be from Hawkeʼs POV and set things in motion with our heroesʼ arrival in Llomerryn. :D I hope itʼs an enjoyable read so far! Kudos and comments welcome and appreciated, and feel free to come say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com) as well! <3


	3. Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke, Fenris and Isabela arrive in the port town of Llomerryn and explore its famed market, where Hawke gets her fortune told.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that this chapter contains a mature but non-explicit sex scene, as well as references to past abuse/torture.

The first thing Hawke notices when she wakes is the heat.

Heat in Ferelden is coy, always playing hard to get, blankets and furs and a bed warmer at their feet, and the tip of Fenris’s nose stubbornly cold despite it all, poor Tevinter that he is. Even Kirkwall’s stifling summers have nothing on Llomerryn: the night was mild when they sighted the burning torchlights of the harbour and rowed the longboats to shore, but the heat now is lazy, insolent, thick enough to drink. _Not going anywhere_ , it seems to say, _whether you like it or not_.

Still. After a week spent swinging in the hammocks of the _Pearl Oyster_ , the soft mattress and the thin sheet of brushed linen tangled about her legs are luxury. Her eyelids refuse to stay open, and she has no idea how long she stays like this, not sleeping but not quite awake. Maker’s Bark heaves a deflating sigh, somewhere at the foot of the bed. Muffled fragments of voice somewhere inside the inn, seabirds squawking outside the window, the rustle of a page being turned. She fights to keep her eyes open at the sound, and finds a crack in the silky swaths of netting hung over the bed. Fenris is sitting by the window, one bare foot propped on the windowsill and a book open in a narrow strip of light— _A Land of Fog_ , she knows, the only volume he bothered to take with him when they abandoned their cottage, and there’s a thought she could’ve done without.

Luckily, he’s distraction enough.

He’s handsome, her lover: it shows even now in the dimly lit room, the one slant of sun limning the strong contours of his face and the wiry muscles of his upper body. For the first time in much too long, the flutter in her belly isn’t seasickness, and she watches him read, till her stomach grumbles loud enough to tear the Veil down and gives her away.

Maker’s Bark hauls his head off the mattress and starts wagging his nubbin of a tail. Fenris turns in her direction, a faint furrow between his eyebrows. “Morning,” she says when she finds her voice, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles.

“It’s past noon,” he informs her, dog-earing his page. “How are you?”

“Better, I think,” Hawke manages around a yawn, stretching, and is relieved to find it’s the truth. Still no bout of nausea, thank the Maker. She’s feeling a little weak, but she hasn’t kept a full meal down since Denerim, so no surprise there. “Hungry, though.”

One corner of his mouth gives an amused quirk. “So I gathered. There is fruit, but I can get you something else, or have a bath drawn if you want.”

As tempting as a bath is right now, she wants him to herself a little while longer. “Not yet. Thank you.” Maker’s Bark scoots closer and drops his massive head on her belly to demand scratches; Hawke complies, smiling up at Fenris. “What did I do to deserve you?”

“I ask myself the same thing every day,” he retorts, but there’s such fondness in his voice her ribcage feels too tight for the warmth flooding her chest. He reaches into the sweep of netting to brush an affectionate thumb along the curve of her cheek, then pulls himself to his feet and makes his way to the window. “Close your eyes.”

Hawke does as she’s told, but the light splashes right through her eyelids, so bright she has to press the heels of her hands to her tender eyes. It takes a few tries before she can keep them open. The room blazes around her with a vengeance, as though in retaliation for her failure to notice it last night before falling into bed and asleep. Between the curtains, wall hangings and canopy, someone must’ve taken great care to ensure not a single strip of drapery or bedding match. Layers upon layers of paint have scabbed away like lichen over the years, and she has no idea if the walls are supposed to be turquoise or mustard or emerald; a rug has been thrown over the dull, scuffed wood of the floorboards, all in swirls and vinework that make her feel dizzy if she stares at it too long. Even the platter of fruit on the table, with its bright glossy leaves and colourful rinds, is drowned out by the rest.

Anywhere else and she’d suspect an abomination at work. But here, with the bluest sky she’s ever seen and palm leaves arcing across the window, it works.

“I love it,” Hawke blurts out. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed now, she realizes, holding gauzy strips of mosquito netting out of the way to get a better look.

Fenris watches her, grinning. “Wait till you look outside.”

All she sees through the window are wisps of clouds and palm leaves swaying in the breeze, but she hears the hum of a crowd now, twinned to the distant rush of the sea unfurling against the shore. She stands on wobbling legs—still no queasiness, though the floor feels _too_ solid now after days at sea—and crosses the few steps to the window, one hand stretched out to brace herself in case she feels faint.

She smells Llomerryn before she sees it. The world outside is so bright she has to squint at first, but the smell of the sea, of spices and dusty paths tickle her nostrils till the shards of colours before her slot back together.

 _So this is where all of Kirkwall’s colours went_ , she thinks when she manages to keep her eyes open. The famed market of Llomerryn is a maze of canopies and parasols, pleaching above winding alleys so crowded she can’t even see the ground. Merchants call out to passersby and dicker; sailors walk with the loose swagger of those who spend little time on land, and women in draped garments keep jars and baskets balanced on their heads. Hawke laughs: some self-important arsehole insisted on coming in a bloody _litter_ , of all things, and now a merchant is exchanging a few choice words with the porters as her stall threatens to topple. On one side of the market, the sea glimmers like molten gold under the midday sun, and on the other, pastel houses stand side by side in motley rows, till the island slopes inward into lush hills, the roofs of white villas peeking through the greenery.

For a second it all melts into a jeweled blur that shouts and laughs and talks in half a hundred different tongues. Her heart lurches, and Hawke clutches the sash of the window before she can drop headlong into the whirling sea of colours down below.

“Not the most reputable place, I am told,” Fenris says, seating himself back on the creaking rattan chair by the window, “but a few of Isabela’s men have long-lost connections in the pleasure houses here they’d been looking forward to”—he makes a vague gesture—“ _rekindle_.”

“Charming,” she says with a breathless laugh. “And still a damn sight better than Kirkwall, I’ll bet.”

He grins the lopsided grin that never fails to turn her legs to water. “That goes without saying.”

Hawke grabs a handful of plump red berries and lets him pull her into his lap, leaning into the solid weight of his chest. The warmth of his skin seeps through her shirt—well, _his_ shirt, technically, still smelling faintly of lyrium and leather. He runs the fingers of one hand up and down her bare thigh in a slow, absentminded rhythm, and reaches for the platter with the other, the lines of lyrium catching the sunlight. “Try this,” he says, handing her a slice of star-shaped fruit. The Maker must’ve been in high spirits when he came up with this one: Hawke expects the taste to be as extravagant as the shape, but it’s sweet and just a little bit sour, crisp as the apples of the orchard behind her childhood home. Most of the fruit on the platter is nothing she’s ever seen before, much less eaten: fuzzy slices of kiwifruit, Fenris tells her, figs with flesh the texture of jam, and sweet, juicy cubes of mango, which she decides she’d happily commit murder for.

For a moment, she entertains how long the coin she has sitting in the Merchants’ Guild would last, if they were to stay here forever, eating fruit and making love day and night in this mismatched little inn room.

The mere thought sends a flower of heat spreading low in her belly. No privacy on the _Pearl Oyster_ , not that the seasickness would’ve allowed for much exertion, and with the Templars forcing them out of Ferelden, they made love on far fewer occasions than is their wont on the long road to Denerim.

 _Enough about Templars_ , she admonishes herself, shoving the thought aside. They’re in Rivain now, lips and fingers sticky with the juice of fruit shaped like stars, and they still have clothes on and that will simply not do.

Her mouth finds his, and his lips part under hers with a surprised inhale. His response is immediate. He drops his half-eaten fig on the table, forgotten, and pulls her into a slow kiss, as golden and sweet as the mango juice still beading her fingertips. The heat of his palm is scalding as it slides under the hem of her shirt and higher on her thigh, and her pulse quickens at his touch. She feels alive again now, tasting him, touching him, his hair gliding soft as watered silk between her fingers, his skin firm and smooth as she traces the lyrium fanning out from the center of his chest. It heaves against hers before long, their breaths growing hard between their mouths, but neither of them wants to be the first to break away, even to breathe. His tongue, when it swipes once between her lips, still tastes of figs and berries.

Not once did he let it show, but she knows he’s missed this as much as she. His desire is unmistakable now against her thigh, and warmth floods her belly anew, the thought of having him inside her again sweet enough to drag a small noise of anticipation out of her.

He forces their mouths apart at that, and she can see the effort it costs him. “Should we—” He clears the rasp out of his voice. “Are you sure you’re well enough?”

Even the Rivaini sun doesn’t burn quite as hot as his eyes right now. If there’s one thing in this Maker-forsaken world she’s sure of, it’s how much she wants him. “I promise to warn you if I start getting seasick again,” she replies with her sweetest smile.

Fenris smirks. “I can move for the both of us, not to worry.”

He pulls her shirt over her head, and then she’s naked, her skin glaring white in the sunlight tumbling through the window. She feels herself flush. No one can see her from the third-story window, and no one can hear her over the din of the market, but with the sun like a lover’s caress on her breasts and thighs, she feels exposed, bared for all the world to see. It sends a little thrill bubbling under her breastbone.

Fenris is certainly trying to look his fill right now. “You are beautiful,” he says, hands and gaze sliding together along the lines of her body. Two weeks without his hands on her have attuned her senses to every little touch, and when he bends his mouth to one of her breasts, she cries out loudly enough to rouse Maker’s Bark. The hound jumps off the bed with a huff, then plops on the floor in the opposite corner of the room. “Sorry, boy,” Hawke says, sheepish.

Fenris chuckles against the dip of her collarbone. “Well, we _are_ going to need the bed.”

“That’s never stopped us before.”

He laughs, and her body thrums with the rough, soothing rumble of his chest as he carries her to the bed. She catches his mouth in a kiss and manages not to break away, even as he lays her down on the soft mattress like a measure of the most precious silk. A tug on the drawstring of his trousers frees his arousal, and the sweep of gossamer parts around him as he slips naked into bed. The light streams gentle and soft over the curve of his shoulder, suffusing his hair with a silver glow.

He’s so tender it hurts. They take their time, charting every inch of sunlit skin. The Rivaini heat discourages any sort of exertion; their hands and mouths are lazy and slow, and a thin film of sweat sheets their bodies long before Fenris brings her thigh over his hip and eases himself into her. A gleam of green shines between his dark lashes as he gasps her name, and she can see he’s holding back, his movements slow and deliberate, his eyes intent on her face. Pleasure crests then founders inside her again and again, like the tireless roar of the waves breaking upon the white strip of shore outside the window.

Hawke closes her eyes and lets herself sink deeper, surrendering to his mouth, to his hands, to the sweet, tender ache of their joining, till the waves are not waves but just one and the same sea crashing over her—and the sea is light, shimmering bright as gold where their bodies meet, flooding the shadows of all the homes she’s left behind.

* * *

The view from the window does Llomerryn no justice. The alleys are too narrow to walk side by side; Fenris follows Isabela through the milling crowd, and Hawke follows Fenris, one hand clutching the hem of his shirt. The shouts of merchants crisscross the air around her, while stalls of jewelry and blades dazzle her in the sunlight, even under the brim of the feathered bicorne hat she borrowed from Isabela. Smells dart away, there and gone: a whiff of sea, of sweat, of smoke and spices and dust, and the comforting scent of Fenris’s collar whenever the crowd presses her into him. A man greets her in accented Common and scoops a handful of candied fennel seeds into her palm for two coppers, and the sweet, aromatic taste spreads on her tongue as she trails after Fenris.

She closes her eyes, and lets the movement of the crowd guide her steps for a few moments. Her senses are filled to the brim, heat and noise rolling over her in a slow, near solid wave.

It’s _glorious_.

Well, it does lose a little bit of its charm when she spots her first cutpurse at work. No one seems to notice the woman picking the satchel of a young elf bent over an herbalist’s stall, the tips of his ears sticking out from a mop of copper curls. Hawke tries to get his attention, but her voice is drowned out by all the yelling peddlers, and he’s too focused on the hanging sheaves of medicinal plants to notice her.

Isabela snorts. “You’re going to yell yourself hoarse within minutes if you insist on catching every cutpurse,” she says.

Hawke sighs, watching as the thief shoves the coin pouch into her pocket before melting into the crowd. Fenris blows out a deep breath, then slips into the crowd after her. The cool flash of lyrium is almost invisible in the glare of the sun; a few passersby throw puzzled glances around them, but no one pays him any more mind than they would a draft of cold air as he steps through and between them to pluck the stolen pouch right out of the thief’s pocket.

“Watch yourself,” he says, dropping the coin pouch into the bewildered elf’s palm. He raises wide eyes at Fenris, and his face turn the same red as his hair as he stammers a mix of apologies and thanks.

“You know, tiger, _not_ returning it would’ve made for a far more effective lesson,” Isabela says as they resume their slow walk through the market.

Fenris only shrugs in response, but there’s a little smile at the corners of his mouth when Hawke takes his elbow and beams at him. The harbour comes into view at the next turn, ships of all sizes anchored in the turquoise crescent of the Amaranthine, lines and lashed sails skimmed with sunlight. “The Qunari are here,” Fenris says, frowning. It takes Hawke a moment to see what he sees: she doesn’t know much about ships, but one of them looks … sharper, somehow. _Meaner_ , she wants to say, her stomach turning to ice. “Why?”

Isabela—of all people—seems unconcerned. “Why is anyone _ever_ in Llomerryn? They’re looking for something. Everything’s here, and everything can be bought for the right price,” she says, then shrugs. “That, or the whorehouses. Some of the services here would make Madam Lusine blush. Can’t blame the poor sods.”

Hawke squints at the Qunari ship from under the wide brim of Isabela’s hat. The horned giants stand out even in the distance, but to her surprise, she also spots a few smaller figures on deck as well, though she can’t tell if they’re elves or humans. Nothing like the stern monolith of the Arishok’s forces, back in Kirkwall: their bearing is much more relaxed, and a few of them seem to be … playing dice? More than the baskets of beads and rare dyes, more than the multicoloured towers of earthenware and piles of braided rugs and all the foodstuffs Hawke doesn’t even have words for, it’s that crew that makes her realize just how far away she is from home.

The sea breeze sends one of the bicorne’s downy feathers tumbling before her eyes, and Hawke blows it out of the way. “Just so we’re clear,” she starts, grinning at Isabela, “I’m not dueling anyone on your behalf again, so behave yourself.”

Fenris huffs. “Don’t count on it.”

Isabela tosses her hair over her shoulder and laughs, sunlight skittering on her earrings and the gold stitches on her kerchief. “Do you two really have so little faith in me? If anyone gets impaled by a horned giant, I promise it’ll be the good kind this time. Ooh, shrimp,” she says, and she’s gone.

Hawke and Fenris exchange a glance before following her to a nearby food stall, where shrimp skewers are turning from pearl gray to coral on a bed of hot coals. Wafts of smoke, cooking smells, and brine blow in their direction, and Hawke’s stomach clenches in protest. After days of seasickness, fresh fruit must’ve been the extent of what it could bear.

Fenris notices her discomfort right away. “Hawke?” he asks, brow furrowed in grave, sweet concern.

“I’m all right,” she answers once she’s sure she’s not going to heave half-digested mango at his feet. She blinks the smoke out of her eyes and attempts a smile despite the queasiness, but the frown on Fenris’s face only deepens. “I just … I need to sit down for a minute.”

He gestures at Isabela, then leads Hawke through the bodies crowding the alleys of the market. That’s when she sees it: a tent somewhat removed from the rest, all in sun-faded sheets of saffron and madder red. A cool, crisp glow lights up the inside, and it takes Hawke a moment to realize it’s a wisp, a spirit orb drifting in slow circles around the lone woman sitting inside. No crystal ball, no tarot cards, no bones or pebbles or cowrie shells. Just that woman humming to herself while braiding yarn and spells into complicated knots, one knee folded up under trousers of loose, rough linen.

A fortune teller—no, a _seer_ , and a real one this time.

She looks up from her knotwork then, and smiles as her dark eyes alight on them. “Travelers from afar,” she calls, in trilling, musical Common. “Shall I part the Veil and take a peek on the other side for you?”

Fenris sighs. “Is this a good idea?”

Isabela catches up to them, sucking red sauce off her fingertips. “I’ll do it again for free, sweet thing,” she says before biting a shrimp off the skewer in her hand.

“Just for fun,” Hawke says, making her way to the tent. She needs to be off her feet and out of the sun, and this will do just fine.

She might also be a _little_ curious.

“What will it be?” the seer asks, setting her yarn aside. Hawke spots rows of coloured vials on a shelf and more of those knotted charms, tied around cinnamon sticks and chips of dawnstone. “One gold for a seeing—unless it’s a love amulet or fertility talisman you require?” Her eyes flick once to Fenris, and a grin splits her dark mouth. “Oh, but you have no need for those, do you?”

Warmth creeps up Hawke’s face at that. Fenris cocks an eyebrow, but says nothing. She takes off the feathered bicorne and drops it on his head instead, then tiptoes to plant an apologetic kiss on his cheek.

“You know,” Isabela says as Hawke ducks into the tent, “I can’t believe my _hat_ has been on top of you both, and _I_ still haven’t.”

The seer tugs a tasseled string loose, and the last thing Hawke hears before the drapes flap closed behind her is Fenris’s laughter. The world shrinks around them: the market seems far away now, without its dazzling whirls of colours and voices. The inside of the tent smells of tea leaves, dried herbs, and incense; it’s stuffy despite the shade, almost uncomfortably so, but the seer seems unbothered by the afternoon heat. “My name is Rosalba,” she says, nodding towards the pile of cushions across the low table. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“Amabel,” Hawke introduces herself, sitting down cross-legged. Her given name still doesn’t roll off her tongue quite right, but after Kirkwall, she’s had to force it on like an outgrown sweater. “Thank you.”

She drops a piece of gold into the leather pouch on the table, then adds a few silvers for good measure. Rosalba’s mouth gives an amused quirk at that, but she says nothing. No wizened old crone, this: she’s a handsome woman, somewhere in her forties if Hawke had to guess, with crow’s feet just starting to rive the brown skin. A thick coil of sable hair falls over her shoulder, and a few strands of silver catch the light of the spirit orb as it drifts overhead. Not one droplet of sweat on her brow, Hawke sees, admiring, when the pale light glides over Rosalba’s skin.

How is she not dying of heat is beyond her. Hawke’s shirt is already sticking to her back, sweat beading down the channel of her spine.

Rosalba’s hands wrap around hers, and a shudder runs through her despite the heat. The fingers are gnarled and twisted as dead roots, as though the bones had been broken and never healed right. Hawke lifts her eyes a split second too fast and tries a smile.

“They look gruesome, I know,” Rosalba says, turning Hawke’s hands over in the glow of the wisp. Hawke fights to keep her face smooth as the knobs of bone rub against her skin. “ _You_ have beautiful hands. A mage’s hands.” Hawke doesn’t say anything to that, but there’s no need: Rosalba’s magic calls to her own, and it stirs beneath her skin in answer. “You have the gift, too. What do you hope I will see that you cannot?”

Hawke lets out a nervous laugh. It hasn’t felt like much of a gift lately. “I’m … I’m not sure. Can you really see the future?”

Rosalba laughs, a rich, throaty sound. “What if I said no?” Her gaze drops to their linked hands, and she studies them for a moment, running a knobbly thumb back and forth along Hawke’s knuckles. “The future is an illusion. It springs from the present, and the present from the past. I look at you now, and I see where you’ve been and where you’re headed. It’s up to you to correct that course or keep treading the same path. _That_ is the nature of the Sight.”

“Then tell me where I’m going,” Hawke answers.

The spirit orb spins its slow circle around them, and the thin plume of incense smoke shivers under the pale glow. “You don’t know, do you?” Rosalba says, not unkindly. “You say this is for fun, but you _are_ hoping for answers. The only path you see is behind you. Always looking over your shoulder …”

Another shudder threatens to run through her. She hates the touch of Rosalba’s hands stroking hers, and she hates herself for it. “Isn’t that the lot of all apostates?” she says, trying for lightness but ending up flippant instead.

“Indeed. Now more than ever.” She lifts one hand and turns it over in the glow of the spirit orb as it drifts past her, the broken bones throwing incongruous shadows on her fingers and palm. Hawke notices the rings of polished wood on her fingers, now that she has no choice but to look at them. Some show of defiance, she wonders—or is it that Rosalba couldn’t take them off after the Templars broke her hands?

Hawke swallows back a hysterical sound. Her cheeks burn with shame; had Fenris not returned for his cloak that Firstfall morning, it might’ve been _her_ hands that got smashed to pieces. “The Templars did this to you?” she asks in a whisper, knowing it for the truth.

Rosalba has a sad smile. “Some souls shine brighter. The rest either flock to their light or seek to put it out.”

“Are you safe here? An apostate in plain sight?”

She shrugs one round shoulder. “Sailors are a superstitious bunch, and the Felicisima Armada would not take kindly to Templars in raider waters. There’s coin to be made here, and it’s as safe a place as any for us, Champion.” Hawke’s blood turns to ice, while Rosalba’s dark mouth stretches open into a grin. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. Your man looks quite distinctive, doesn’t he?”

Of course. Of _course_ —how could she be so bloody stupid? She knows she won’t be safe as long as Fenris is with her, but she won’t ever _feel_ safe without him, so he’s with her and she’s with him and that’s the end of it. Anything that gets in their way, they decided, they can face together.

But she hoped—Maker, how did she _hope_ —they’d left her name behind once and for all.

“It’s unfair, isn’t it?” Hawke asks, her tongue thick in her mouth. The inside of the tent feels that much hotter after the chill flooding her veins, and her breath is growing short, sweat dewing her brow and upper lip. “What I’m doing to him?”

“It’s a strong spirit that can be your match, but only he can answer that,” Rosalba answers. “You’ve changed the fortunes of many, and not always for the best.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Hawke mutters.

“And now? Are you trying?”

Hawke wants to leave. She wants to _leave_ , but that’s something a small child would do, not the Champion of Kirkwall. These are just words, she reminds herself, intangible as the incense smoke smelling of sandalwood and balsam, harmless as the spirit orb floating around them. “People weren’t thrilled with me last time I helped, so no, I’m not trying anymore. All I want is”—her breath hitches in her throat, uselessly—“is to _go home_.”

The orb floats behind her as she speaks, and its light gouges deep shadows on Rosalba’s face, throws shadow crescents under her eyes. For a split second, her face turns hard as a mask, something burning at the bottom of her eye sockets, but the spirit orb keeps drifting along its slow, curving path, and the illusion vanishes as fast as it came. “Under the circumstances, I can see why,” Rosalba says, her voice soft, her mouth pressed into a gentle smile. “We are but beasts of burden, and it’s the pitiful truth of our condition that what we lose weighs just as much as what we carry.”

There are more words after that, but Hawke’s head is swimming, and they keep slipping past her. The heat—the heat is too much, dark spots flowering at the edges of her vision while Rosalba speaks, her words whirling in the incense smoke. “I need—I need some air,” she says, her tongue cottony, and pushes herself to her feet.

Maybe Rosalba didn’t make out what she said; Hawke wouldn’t blame her, considering how thick the words felt in her mouth, but the woman’s hands are hooked around hers like claws, and Hawke sits back down hard, a sharp pain pricking through the fog wrapping itself tight around her. For one delirious, horrifying second, she thinks the sharp little bone shards of Rosalba’s hand broke through the skin of her palm. The tent starts spinning around her, while a drop of scarlet wells up amidst the gray blooms spreading before her eyes: sprays of blood reeking of copper and the red tree beyond the hoarfrost on the window, and all she can do is stand there in the middle of the kitchen with Fenris’s cloak still in her hands and her magic bled dry—

Hawke wakes up again in Fenris’s arms. Isabela is crouched next to him, fanning her with the brim of her hat. “You should have said something,” Rosalba scolds her, the last stirrings of a frost spell vanishing as she dabs her brow with a handful of melting snow. Hawke shivers, though she’s not sure the cold is to blame.

Fenris graces Rosalba with a single, sharp glance, then gathers Hawke in his arms. “Yes, you should have,” he agrees. _I told you so_ , his every movement seems to say, though at least he spares her the embarrassment of saying it out loud.

“Those must’ve been some thrilling revelations,” Isabela laughs.

“Sorry,” Hawke slurs. The sunlight is so bright she feels silly now, the stifling feeling from inside the tent blown away by the sea breeze. She leans her head on Fenris’s shoulder as he carries her back to the inn, and steals a glance at her hand: no blood, no wound, not even a pinprick; just the phantom touch of broken bones on her palm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and as always, I love hearing from you! Kudos and comments welcome and appreciated, and feel free to come say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com) as well! <3


	4. Fenris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris grows more and more concerned as Hawke does not appear to be getting better; in fact, she’s acting increasingly out of sorts ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for posting this chapter much later than I intended! I caught a nasty cold, and with the holidays coming up I didn’t have as much time/energy to write as I’d hoped. I hope it’s worth the wait! <3
> 
> This chapter contains a brief, mature sex scene, as well as violence. I also wrote this chapter while listening to the soundtrack for A Plague Tale: Innocence, so I thought I would link to it as [recommended listening of sorts](https://youtu.be/qqUMByvhKGY?t=136) (starting with the second track so that it matches better). :D

Rarely has Fenris felt so powerless. Give him a foe at the end of his blade, and he will make short work of them. But watching as Hawke gets sick again that afternoon, strands of dark hair sticking to the sweat on her ashen brow, and not a thing he can do about it?

It is torture.

“The heat,” she says, curled up on the bed between him and Maker’s Bark. Her cheeks are splotched red, even as she drinks the chilled water of a young coconut he bought from a stall outside. “Maker, I’ll never be able to live here.”

“You will get used to it in time,” he tries, but the words sound strangely rehearsed when he says them. Comfort has always been Hawke’s province, not his.

She gives him a wan, tired grin. “As if _you_ ever got used to the cold in Ferelden.”

“I did get used to the cold,” he defends himself.

An eyebrow matches the amused slant of her mouth. “Fen, you had us sleep with three blankets in _Harvestmere_.”

“ _You_ had us sleep with three blankets.”

“Because _you_ kept stealing them.”

Fenris steals a few sips of the fresh, milky water to hide his smile. “I did not,” he retorts, though he remembers his dismay upon discovering the trees silvered with frost one morning, the blades of grass crunching under his steps and the air sharp as needles. Fereldan autumns are precocious enough to make the month of Firstfall a misnomer.

“You did too,” she says, then drops her voice an octave. “‘ _Fasta vass_ , how does anyone _live_ here?’”

“I’ve never said that,” he says, and Hawke flicks her other eyebrow in answer. All right, perhaps he’s said something of the sort on one or two occasions. “And besides, no one should. It _snows_.” It is a relief to hear her laugh, weak and jagged as it is. “At least in Rivain we will never get snowed in.”

“You say that as if anything could beat having to stay inside keeping each other warm.”

She tries to pass it off as a jest, but he can hear the longing in her voice. Hawke has a point, but it is moot. There is no returning to Ferelden, and they both know it. “Instead we will have the sea to keep cool. There are worse fates.”

She chews her lip as she considers that for a moment, then looks at him, eyes crystalline in the sun slanting through the mosquito netting. “Bela said there are houses on stilts in Rivain,” she says. “I can’t picture that at all.”

Fenris can, but only because he’s seen similar structures on Seheron. “You will see them for yourself soon enough. The stilt houses,” he says as he reaches for her hand to run a thumb along her knuckles, “and the white-sand beaches and the floating markets.”

“Floating markets?” Their fingers meet tip to tip, and Hawke narrows her eyes at him suspiciously above their linked hands. “I could buy the stilt houses, but I am _not_ falling for this.”

He makes a noncommittal noise. “We will see who gets the last laugh.”

“Oh, I will, because you’re a liar,” she says, twining their fingers together. “A liar, and a filthy blanket _thief_.”

Something aches inside him at the open affection in her gaze. He does not feel worthy of it right now, helpless as he is to ease her discomfort. “Good thing we have no need for blankets in Rivain, then.”

Hawke laughs, then drains her coconut before nestling against his chest. She does not stir when he presses a kiss to the crown of her head, mere moments later. Nothing to do but return to his book, but the words on the page are slippery, and soon a headache is building behind his eyeballs.

The afternoon has melted away into a burnished sky by the time Hawke wakes up, bleary and paler yet, but she shuffles along when he heads to the tavern downstairs. Isabela’s laughter peals across the room, clouded with smoke from the water pipes. She sits perched on a man’s lap, so many tattoos on his skin it’s hard to tell what his original complexion is. A rhythmic thud: a man is stabbing a knife between the fingers of his splayed hand under the disinterested gaze of the nearby patrons, till they notice the newcomers.

Two score eyes appraise them from within dark hoods and tattooed faces. For once, Fenris is not the one standing out, with the markings and the sheathed knife strapped to his hip. Hawke is: her scars are not on her skin for the most part, and the blue, wide-eyed gaze she sweeps over the room calls to her its full attention.

Something shifts in the tavern. For all its cutpurses and stalls of stolen jewelry, the market’s threats were minor, if one keeps his wits about himself. But the sunlight gone, Llomerryn drops all pretense of cordiality. Fenris thinks of an animal poised to pounce, but a few seconds of holding the patrons’ stares and they return to their pipes and drinks.

Isabela’s companion blows out a cloud of smoke through his nostrils, then greets them with a lopsided grin that reveals a row of gold-capped teeth. “So, the Champion of Kirkwall and her elf,” he says, looking them over appreciatively. Fenris shoots Isabela a sharp look—evidently, it was too much to ask she did not reveal their identities to every third thug on Llomerryn—but she pretends not to notice. The man clicks his tongue in mock reproof. “Isabela, you failed to mention a thing or two about your friends.”

Isabela snorts. “If anyone manages to bed them, it’s me, so don’t even think about it. Anyway, Hawke, Fenris, this is Pieron.”

“Otherwise known as The Black Mamba,” Pieron says with a flourish of one hand.

Fenris lifts an eyebrow and tries to catch Hawke’s eye, but she’s absorbed by an old, dried splatter on the table instead. She must not have shaken off the drowsiness yet. “Quite the moniker,” Fenris says.

Isabela shakes her head with an exasperated roll of her eyes, the torchlight brushing ruddy highlights on her black curls. “No one actually calls him that,” she says, then takes a long drag from the water pipe. “He has his uses, though, believe it or not.”

“So she says, but she still won’t let me join her crew,” Pieron laments.

Hawke turns down a turn at the pipe with a wave of her hand, so Isabela offers Fenris the mouthpiece instead. “Because you’re better in bed than on deck,” she tells Pieron, “and I don’t bring my lovers aboard my ship. Anyway, Striker wouldn’t take kindly to me poaching his crew.”

Fenris draws on the pipe tentatively; the smoke tastes of honey and mint and leaves his tongue tingling, and he blows it out towards the ceiling while Pieron and Isabela argue good-naturedly. “Striker’s in bed with Ianto now, so I jumped ship,” Pieron answers. “Almost _literally_. Matter of time before they slaughter each other.”

“If only. Adaar, then.”

He gives a startled laugh. “The oxwoman? No, thanks. I like my cock where it is.”

Isabela shrugs. “As long as she lets you keep the tongue,” she says with an enigmatic smile.

Hawke lifts her eyes from the sticky, scuffed wood of the table. “That hardly seems to be the most valuable thing about him so far,” she says, without even a smile to take the edge out of her words.

Pieron throws her a piqued glance, then sticks his tongue out. It’s split down the middle, the two prongs rubbing together obscenely. “Next best thing after a cock full of lyrium, I suppose,” he retorts with a sullen shrug.

The dull ache behind Fenris’s brow turns into a throb instead. Somewhere in the back of the room, the knife keeps striking the tabletop with its endless _tak-tak-tak_. “ _Kaffas_ ,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Fine. Get it out of your system.”

The expression of feigned innocence looks absurd on Pieron’s tattooed face. “I’m just _curious_ ,” he says, lifting one upturned hand before dropping it back on Isabela’s thigh. “An elf gets to poke the Champion of Kirkwall—it makes you wonder, you know? Heard mages get a high from the stuff, so. Must feel nice to get fucked with it.”

Hawke props her chin on her hands, a sweet smile on her lips. “I have a bottle of lyrium or two, if you want to shove them up your arse and see for yourself.”

Fenris blinks. Pieron shoves Isabela off his lap and leans towards Hawke, so close even Fenris can smell the rum on his breath. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re not in Kirkwall anymore,” he spits, jabbing a finger at her face. “You’re stuck here, same as us, so don’t you go lording over me, you little c—”

Fenris is on his feet before he knows it, one hand fisted into Pieron’s collar. The water pipe wobbles on its base, and Isabela rushes to steady it, cursing as the glowing coals drop to the floor and scatter sparks at her feet. “All right, boys, will you please stop being fucking _idiots?_ Hawke, why don’t you get yourself something to eat?”

Hawke hasn’t even flinched. She sits there with that cold, cold smile still on her face, fingers threaded together primly under her chin. “I’m not hungry,” she says.

“Then go buy me a drink,” Isabela retorts.

Hawke holds Pieron’s fiery glower for a few more seconds, then stands up without a word. Fenris watches her wend her way between the tables, and feels— _relief_ , then shame, because Pieron is a fool but harmless, and this has to be days of seasickness getting the better of Hawke.

But that scythe of a smile …

Slowly, Fenris releases both his breath and his hold on Pieron’s collar. He’s coiled ready to dodge an opportunistic punch, but Pieron lets himself fall back on his seat. “What a bitch,” he mutters, to no one in particular.

“I am going with her,” Fenris announces as he pushes himself up, and there’s a hollow drop in the pit of his stomach because Hawke is not at the bar, or anywhere he can see her. Isabela and Pieron are talking behind him, their voices a hushed, grey buzz at his back. Hawke cannot have gone far, but his eyes are frantic as he scans the tavern.

 _Tak-tak-tak_ , goes the knife, and that’s when he spots her: one white hand splayed on the filthy table, the torchlight like a ruddy star on the point of the blade.

The man twirls the knife once between his fingers, then thrusts it down between her thumb and forefinger.

 _Tak_. _Tak. Tak_.

“Hawke,” Fenris chokes out, too low, too strained for anyone to hear. The surge of anger nearly blinds him, but he dares not do anything while the knife is stabbing the too-small spaces between her fingers, so he watches, holding his breath as though it might disturb the blade’s path. The knife is a silver blur as it dances around her hand, the man singing a sea shanty of some sort to keep his rhythm, faster and faster still.

_Tak. Tak. Tak. Tak tak tak tak-tak-tak-tak-tak—_

Pieron lets out a low whistle. “She’s got some brass balls, I’ll give her that,” he says. Isabela makes a noise halfway between mirth and horror.

What in the _Void_ is Hawke thinking?

She watches the knife, lips parted and pale. Fenris expects her to scream out any second, the blade jabbed into the web of skin between her fingers, and he knows—he _knows_ he will kill the man if he misses and stabs her hand, knows it as he’s ever known anything about himself, but the sailor reaches the end of his song without spilling blood, twirls the knife again, and thrusts it to the ceiling in triumph.

Hawke sways on her feet and lets out a giddy laugh while a few patrons slap her shoulders. The sailor sheathes his knife, then takes her hand and peppers kisses on her knuckles. “Brave little fingers,” he says.

She’s still laughing as she staggers back towards Fenris, the smile only dropping off her face when he clasps her arm. “What is _wrong_ with you?” he asks in a rough whisper, though there’s no point: the whole tavern is looking at them now, all smirks and nudging elbows. If the dark stains on the dirty floorboards are anything to go by, the place has seen its fair share of knife fights and brawls, but a domestic argument must be something new.

“Nothing,” she says, tugging her arm free. “Just having fun.”

He cannot _look_ at her. He cannot stand the sight of that smug little smile hovering at the corners of her mouth, so he turns on his heel and climbs the stairs, his fists balled at his sides. Hawke can handle herself, he knows. Let her have her fun if she wants, and she better not come crying if it costs her a finger or two.

“Oh, come on, Fen,” Hawke calls out from the bottom of the stairs, her voice muffled through the rush of blood drumming in his ears. She heaves an exasperated sigh before following him to their room and slinking through the door after him. Maker’s Bark lifts his head off his paws and lets out an inquisitive whine. “I could’ve healed myself if—”

Fenris whirls around to face her, so angry he’s shaking. “That is _not_ the _point_.”

The torches are out; the sun has set while they were downstairs, but she rolls her eyes, and the whites glint in the light of the moon rising outside the window. “Fen, nothing even _happened_.”

He runs his hands through his hair and starts pacing along the length of the room, but still the anger burns beneath his skin, and he does not know how to put it out. They do not fight, he and Hawke, not anymore. There has been nothing but the occasional disagreement since Danarius died, little spats she assures him all lovers have once in a while, but Hawke has never put herself in harm’s way deliberately. Not like that, anyway, not for cheap thrills.

He walks over to the window and grips the sill, watches the shattered moon rippling on the waves. “Why would you do that?” he asks, once he controls his voice again.

A long silence meets his question. “I don’t know,” she finally answers, clear and stunned as a revelation.

“You don’t know,” Fenris repeats, the words like sawdust in his mouth.

He risks a look at her over his shoulder. He’s known her ten years, and she’s never kept a secret from him during that time whether she willed it or not, always easier to read than the picture books she taught him with. But her face is smooth as eggshell in the moonlight now, and he sees nothing in her eyes but a look of blank confusion, like she was trying to remember something but did not even know what.

“The fortune teller,” he blurts out, pushing himself off the sill. A foolish notion, but the only one he has. “What did she tell you?”

“Nothing,” Hawke answers, so quietly he barely hears her over the sea lapping at the docks outside. Then she hangs her head and presses the heels of her hands to her eyes.

The anger burns itself out all at once, leaving him almost lightheaded. He moves closer and lifts her chin with two fingers; she’s not crying as he first feared, but that brings him no relief. “Hawke,” he says, trying to meet her gaze. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She draws in a sharp, shuddering breath. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “I don’t know.”

Fenris wraps his arms around her, and she shivers against him, balling her hands into the fabric of his shirt. “You are not yet recovered,” he tries, failing to come up with anything but the obvious. “Come to bed.”

Hawke nods. She squeezes herself out of her trousers while he strips down to his underclothes, then climbs into bed with him. Her skin is hot to the touch, and her kiss, when her lips find his, feverish; her hands move down the front of his body, and his cock hardens against her palm before long, mindless. He wraps his hand around her wrist and forces his mouth away. “Hawke—”

“I want—I _need_ you, Fenris,” she says, straddling his hips. “ _Please_.”

They make love again, her pale body rippling on top of him. He should know better, but this, at least, is familiar: her soft, breathy moans, the fragrant expanse of her skin, the wet heat of her sex, and his only regret is that it is over too soon, his seed spilling inside her when she shudders hard above him.

Hawke is asleep not long afterwards. Her hair smells like the sweet smoke from the water pipes downstairs, and her skin almost glows in the soft haze of the moon, one shoulder blade rising and falling under his thumb as he caresses it absentmindedly. He closes his eyes, and allows himself to think about the thatched cottage in Ferelden, the sails of Redcliffe’s windmills spinning steady and slow in the verdant valley below. The hillocks behind the cottage were bright yellow with dandelions when they settled there; within a fortnight, they’d turned downy and white as the clouds overhead, and Hawke told him about the games she and her sister used to play as girls: daisies to divine their fortunes, four-leaf clovers pressed between the pages of their father’s volumes, wishes borne on dandelion fluff.

Beneath his eyelids, Hawke is as he remembers her, blue eyes bright with laughter, woolen skirt covered in dog hair, her fingernails dark with earth from the garden and her hands sticky with milky sap. She plucks a dandelion gone to seed, then purses her lips to blow the down away; the winds carry on where her breath ends, the seeds drifting far over the spinning sails of Redcliffe.

She discards the bare stem, then plucks another dandelion clock, and another and another. _Fen_ , she says, her voice clear and bright as bells, and Fenris realizes she too is blowing apart, small pieces of her floating away on the breeze, and his hand when he reaches for her only closes on thin air—

He starts awake, Hawke’s comforting weight gone. It is still night outside; Maker’s Bark is snoring softly at the foot of the bed, one ear twitching in his sleep.

“Hawke?” Fenris tries, then clears the sleep out of his voice before calling her name again. Maker’s Bark rouses with a yawn, but otherwise all that answers is the breeze stirring the palm trees outside the window, the sigh of the waves breaking on the shore, and the muffled voices drifting through the floor from the tavern. “Where is she, boy?”

The hound noses at the sheets, then jumps off the bed to sniff around. Fenris pulls on his shirt and trousers, and after a second of hesitation, takes his greatsword with him. He’s being ridiculous, he knows. Hawke must have felt sick again; he would find her sitting on the steps outside the inn, stammering an apology for worrying him, or perhaps she’s decided to apologize to Pieron and joined him and Isabela for a drink after all.

Well, he can rule out that last option. He follows Maker’s Bark down the dim hallway, and the grunts and moans streaming through the door of Isabela’s room leave little doubt as to how she’s chosen to spend the rest of her evening. Downstairs, the smoke from the water pipes is thicker, and the crowd, rowdier. Fenris blinks the sting out of his eyes as he slips through the tavern, ignoring the patrons gawking at the incongruous sight of an elf and his warhound. Maker’s Bark stops to sneeze once or twice, strings of slobber splattering the old floorboards, then resumes his quest with all the determination that generations of careful breeding have instilled in him.

Hawke is not outside.

The rickety staircase creaks under his weight as Fenris descends two steps at a time. Perhaps she’s gone for a walk, he tells himself, but the perspective is ludicrous, and his thoughts are edging into panic now. Llomerryn is lively as ever despite the late hour, but he barely hears the beggars asking for coin, the streetwalkers hailing him, the ring of spectators cheering a prizefight on the beach. The packed sand is warm under his feet as he follows Maker’s Bark, the hound still on Hawke’s trail despite the smells of the market and the reek of low tide. The flames of a charcoal fire flicker at the edge of his vision, and the smell of cooking meat and seawater meld into a noxious stench. He notices, distantly, that the fortune teller’s tent is gone.

The crowd thins as they move past the market. The light of the burning torches vanish behind them; a pale sickle of moon illuminates the sand and trims the fitful sea with silver, flattens the shore into a colourless strip. Flash of someone’s eyes, somewhere off to his right—not Hawke, and Fenris looks away as he keeps pace with Maker’s Bark, hoping the greatsword and warhound are enough of a deterrent.

No such luck.

He senses more than sees the silhouette following him. “Wait,” they cry out, but Fenris has no time to spare for the local vermin, so he ignores them till they start running, muffled footfalls coming closer. “ _Wait!_ ”

 _Kaffas_. He whirls around and grabs them by the collar, then finds himself nose to nose with another elf. “I know you,” Fenris says after a beat, recognizing the red-haired lad whose coin purse he returned earlier that day. “You were at the market.”

The stranger nods, slowly dropping his upturned palms. “I—I didn’t get to thank you properly—”

He staggers when Fenris releases him. “I’ve no time for this,” he cuts him off, turning on his heel.

“Wait,” the other elf says again, stumbling after him in the sand. “I _saw_ her.”

This time the words rip through Fenris like fire. He has his fist clenched into the lad’s shirt again before he even knows it. “Speak,” he demands, pitching his voice low in case anyone else is hiding in the shadows. For all he knows this is a trap, but the beach is deserted except for the occasional drunken straggler, and Maker’s Bark is still more focused on Hawke’s trail than any potential enemy. “Where is she?”

“She was walking towards the wrecks,” the other elf answers with a flick of his wide eyes. Fenris can just barely make out the scraggly silhouettes of a few shipwrecked vessels farther down the shore, a darker shade of black in the distance. “I tried calling out to her, but it was like she was …”

Fenris gives him a hard shake when he trails off. “Like she was _what_?”

The lad cringes as though he expected to be struck, and Fenris forces himself to loosen his hold. “Like she was sleepwalking,” he finishes in a small voice.

Dread fills the pit of Fenris’s stomach, as dark and immense as the ocean breaking black along the shore. The night stretches before him, the glimmer of a ship’s lanterns wavering on the surface of the Amaranthine, a few scattered lights shining amidst the hills opposite. Hawke has not sleepwalked once in her life, and after tonight, Fenris knows the answer is nothing so simple as that. This is something else.

He should have known.

“Can I help?” the other elf squeaks. “Should I get someone, or—”

But Fenris is no longer listening. He takes off running after Maker’s Bark, cursing under his breath as the sand parts and sinks under his weight. “Find her!” he calls out to the hound, watching him charge ahead along the rippling crescent of the shore.

Progress is easier once Fenris reaches the darker strip of the beach. The wet sand is firm under his feet as he runs, frantic eyes searching the obscurity before him. His lungs and legs are burning before long, but he ignores the pain, his chest heaving with three breaths for every rolling wave that unfurls along the shore.

Clouds scud before the moon and plunge the beach in darkness. For one terrible, unending moment, his only reference point is the faraway flicker of that ship’s lanterns in the distance. The low tide reeks of Kirkwall.

At last the clouds scatter. In the distance, a streak of white shivers above the waves.

Hawke, her shift a pale smudge in the night.

At once he understands what the other elf meant. She sways from side to side as she wades in the surf, as though in time with a very slow piece of music only she can hear. Maker’s Bark keeps moving up close then retreating, ears pinned back and nervous paws tramping at the bubbling sand, but she does not seem to notice.

“ _Hawke_ ,” Fenris cries out through the fire rising in his throat.

No reaction. He lunges after her. The world shifts around him, the distance between them burning up in a pulse of lyrium. “Hawke,” he says again as he grabs her by the arm.

She whips around to face him. Fenris nearly lets go: her face is twisted in indignant fury, her eyes blazing with something he’s never spied in them before. “Don’t you fucking _touch_ me,” she spits.

She tries to jerk away, but he holds on. “Hawke, it’s _me_ ,” he says, but she does not listen. They tussle together in the receding tide, the water foaming around their ankles treacherous with sharp rocks and seashells. That does not stop her: she stumbles once, and then she’s kicking and scratching again like some cornered animal, bared teeth catching the moonlight. Maker’s Bark is howling and running in panicked circles around them; it occurs to Fenris the hound might be trying to get his attention, but Hawke is still fighting him with all she’s got, and it’s all he can do to block her blows.

He only just catches her wrist before she can claw at his face. He manages to clasp her to his chest then, arms pinned to her sides. Hawke is still screaming and kicking at the air in front of her, but he has her immobilized now, and this time he feels it.

It’s _all over her_.

Fenris thinks of thorns and brambles, vicious tendrils growing like weeds from tiny dark seeds. It had been a close call, years ago in the Blooming Rose, when the mage whore Idunna had used blood magic to try and compel Hawke to slit her own throat. The attempt had been so crude as to be farcical, but this—this is _patient_ , insidious, and all the more dangerous for it.

“Hawke,” he grunts into her ear, “fight it off,” but he has no idea if she can even hear him. The spell is woven stiff over her, a tangle knotting itself tighter with each passing hour. Whoever cast it was angry: the ropey coils of magic flare up when he rouses the lyrium of his markings, and he feels the vein of wrath spun tight at its core like the marrow of a bone. He is no mage, but perhaps he can disturb the spell, find some loose strand to unravel; his skin screams with the flaying pain of it, but he does not let go, even as Hawke wails with her head thrown back and the spell-vines drag their thorns deep into him—

A tendril snaps. Hawke goes limp in his arms, so suddenly he loses his balance. They stumble into the frothing water together, and a high keening pain radiates through his knee when it lands on something sharp. At least he breaks Hawke’s fall.

When she looks at him again, her eyes are clear. “Fen,” she pants, wading on all four in the surf. “What in the Maker’s—”

“Later,” he says, pulling her to her feet before unsheathing his greatsword. Maker’s Bark is growling, hackles raised; the darkness seems to shed parts of itself as figures close in on them. “Can you fight?”

Flames are already gathering to her hands, lighting her eyes and the slant of her smile. “Talk about a rude awakening,” she says, her fire dancing on the swell of the wave rushing in.

“A little early for quips,” he retorts. He counts a score of enemies in the glow of her flames now, perhaps more. Nothing they cannot handle, but there’s a blood mage somewhere among them, and Fenris knows what they’re capable of.

“Get her,” someone commands, and his gaze snaps to a Qunari woman—no, _Tal-Vashoth_ , the curve of her horns mirroring Hawke’s outstretched arms. “Kill the elf.”

There’s a flash of silver out the corner of his eye, and Fenris runs the nearest bandit through before the throwing knife has even left his hand. In the split second before Hawke’s fire comes roaring down from the sky, the beach is near bright as day, and the nape of his neck is warm with the heat of it. “You can try,” she calls out in answer over the whoosh of her spell.

A thick curve of sand erupts in flame. The unlucky are charred in place, but the rest scatter like ants out of an anthill. A few attempt to surround him; Fenris pulls his blade free from the limp body at his feet, fells an enemy with a single arc of his sword, then another on the downswing. Maker’s Bark charges, vise-like jaws snapping shut around a woman’s shin with a sickening crunch. Fenris sweeps through the wall of flames, their heat half a world away; he becomes flesh again with one hand sunk into a woman’s ribcage, and gives the shriveled little thing inside a squeeze. Hawke’s magic swirls around him in great rushing whorls that leave his markings tingling as they brush past, the air so thick with it he can taste it.

Through it all he feels the full force of another mage’s will colliding with Hawke’s. Spells are lashing at hers like storm winds, artless, ponderous, but powerful, and Fenris knows who cast them without having even seen her yet.

The fortune teller, with the broken hands.

He hacks his way through the raiders, picking off any who wanders too close to Hawke. She’s holding her ground, lightning crackling from her raised fists as she stands in the waves, her wet shift sticking to her body. She could set the very sea boiling if she put her mind to it, but scattering the fortune teller’s spells is taking up most of her concentration, and it falls to him to keep her safe. He parries, sends the point of his blade into someone’s stomach. A swing of his sword slices flesh and bone, toppling two raiders at once, while a fork of lightning takes care of a third.

They have not fought like this for the better part of a year, not since they left the Imperial Highway and its hordes of slavers in favour of Ferelden’s leafy green hills. Fenris trained, of course, kept his skills as sharp as he could. He ran through figures and routines in the clearing behind the cottage every morning before breaking his fast, early enough for him to join Hawke back in bed most days.

Little good that did, though, with the Templars waiting till he had his back turned to make their move.

And he’s let it happen again.

He lifts his greatsword just in time to block the morning star swinging at him. The Tal-Vashoth is glaring at him on the other end, face scrunched up with scorn; he gives his sword a sharp tug, hoping to throw her off balance while the tines are still caught on the crossguard, but she’s already hefting her weapon to swing it at him again. She’s fast, more than anyone her size has any right to be. Fenris almost trips over one of the corpses littering the beach as she pushes him farther and farther back, the seawater splashing at his feet with each step backward. He calls upon the lyrium of his markings to move behind her, and she stumbles when she finds her target gone.

He has her. He thrusts his sword forward, the point aimed between her shoulder blades, and braces himself for the crunch of her spine.

Pain bursts white-hot inside him. For a moment all he knows is fire, like his skin had been coated in burning grease. One of the fortune teller’s spells must have hit true: his vision swims, only a thin thread of air making it to his lungs.

He realizes, too late, that he’s dropped his sword.

Somewhere, Hawke screams his name. The beach reeks of rot and death; the dark, wet sand before him glistens under bright, flaring arcs of magic. He sees horns, and hears the whoosh of steel swinging through the air.

The world cracks apart. His vision burns bright with searing white; another one of the fortune teller’s spells, except it’s inside his head, it’s _inside his head_ , crackling fire and thunderheads battering against his skull and then—

Nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays, everyone, and thank you very much for reading! Come yell at me on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com/)!


	5. Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke surrenders to Kasra Adaar for the chance to heal Fenris, and is then taken aboard the _Fury_ , where she learns of her captors’ plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, everyone, and sorry (again!) for the late update! I was thoroughly unproductive over the holidays, but I’m hoping to get back into a decent cadence again soon. I’m running behind on comment replies as well, but I promise I will get to them as soon as I can! Thank you for sticking with me! <3
> 
> Please note that this chapter contains graphic descriptions of injury and verbal threats of sexual violence (and on that note: there will NOT be actual sexual violence of any kind in the fic, and the threats are limited to this one chapter. Just thought I would make this clear, in case anyone was concerned about the future direction of this story).

Hawke hears it.

The Tal-Vashoth swings her morning star, and Hawke hears it crack against Fenris’s skull, even through the breaking waves, even through her own scream. Her mind is slow, too slow, weighed down by the dregs of blood magic, and she’s still fumbling through her barrier when he slams against the packed sand. _No_ , she thinks, or maybe she screams it out loud. _No no no no no, oh Maker, not Fenris, please not_ him—

She doesn’t feel her body. She doesn’t feel the blast of magic whipping from her fingers to hurl the Tal-Vashoth halfway across the beach, doesn’t feel the sand under her feet or under her knees when she drops next to Fenris. She doesn’t remember raising the dome of magic shielding them, but it pulses with a dim blue light now as she bends over him, a senseless litany falling from her mouth. “I’m here, Fen,” she’s saying, over and over, reaching for his face with trembling fingertips. “I’m here.”

Fenris tries to say her name—at least she _thinks_ that awful wheeze is her name. He must know it’s her because he’s trying to reach for her face with one trembling hand, but his eyes can’t seem to find her, and that hollow, glassy stare doesn’t belong on his face. A cold hard rip of terror slams up her spine: suddenly she knows the dark pool spreading around his head for what it is, the sand black and glistening against the silver of his hair.

There’s so much _blood_.

“He’s meat for the gulls, Champion,” the Tal-Vashoth says beyond the pulsing wall of the barrier. “Come, now. It’s over.”

“ _No_ ,” Hawke tries to say, but it comes out a sob. A hot rush of tears blurs her vision, and she tastes salt at the back of her throat. “Let me—let me heal him, and I’ll come with you.”

“You’re wasting your—”

Her head snaps up, and whatever the woman sees in her face makes her stumble back a step or two. “Let me heal him, or so help me I’m taking you all down to the Void with me.”

She wants to so badly she’s burning with it. The Veil hangs loose around her, whispers filling her head as sharp, scuttling shadows claw at the shreds. Any one of those dark hands in hers would be enough to burn this whole Maker-damned island to slag, but she slams her mind shut against the din of voices and whispers spilling out of the Fade. Instead she threads her fingers through the wet, sticky mess of Fenris’s hair, the sand gritty under the pads of her fingers, and then her throat closes up tight.

Another sob tears its way through, and the barrier throws back at her the pathetic, mewling sound of it, because there’s a _hole_ in his head, and it’s her fault, Andraste help her this is _all her fault_.

For a split second she wants to curl up in a ball and howl, because what in the Void is she even supposed to _do_? She should’ve listened when Anders tried to teach her what he knew, should’ve bothered learning something other than the most simplistic of healing spells. No one can help Fenris, though, no one but her, so Hawke scrambles for every last bit of healing she’s ever been taught and gropes with her mind into the mess of blood and hair and bone, but the damage is too deep, too thorough: there are no clean edges to this wound, nothing she can pinch shut and fuse back together again, and Maker have mercy, Fenris can’t _die_ —

There. Her ribs and breastbone open wide; her perspective shifts, and then she _sees_ , even through the tears running down her face and the mounting panic: a web of filaments strung between the fault lines in the flesh and the bone, strands of spun gold hanging torn. Hawke still has no idea what she’s doing, except she _does_ , tightening a thread here and spinning a new one there, weaving them back together again little by little. For all she knows maybe she’s making things worse—maybe she’s killing him, but there’s nothing else she can do, so she pours every last fleck of magic within her grasp into the wound, knitting the torn net of gold back together till the flesh is whole again, and then she breaks down the magic of her barrier and uses that too.

Not a drop of magic left in her when she stops. Her head is spinning; she feels faint, hollowed out, turned inside out then back again. Were it not for the blood haloing his head, Fenris looks like he might be sleeping, his brow smooth over shivering lashes. His hand is in hers, clutched to her cheek; she tries not to let go, but the hands seizing her are stronger, and it slips out of her grasp.

* * *

The raiders haul her aboard the _Fury_ with less care than stolen cargo. Hawke stumbles face first onto the deck, her shoulder slamming against the unwashed planks speckled with bird shit. The acrid reek of pitch coats the inside of her mouth, but does little to chase the coppery stench still stuck to her nostrils. The crew—what’s left of it—stumbles after her, securing the longboats or nursing their wounds; footsteps scatter about as sailors relay their captain’s orders, but the sounds roll off her, thin as fading mist. The side of her body is throbbing with a dull, distant pain, like pressing an old, yellowing bruise.

Someone’s crying somewhere on the ship, formless sobs billowing with the unfurled sails.

“Weigh anchor and get us underway,” the Tal-Vashoth yells, tightening a strip of fabric around the burns on her forearm. A thick trickle of blood spatters the planks before Hawke’s eyes as someone walks past her. “And for fuck’s sake, _shut her up_.”

Hands tug her back on her feet, and then Hawke’s cheek is burning. She can’t even tell who struck her: she’s been torn in two, half of her still with Fenris on that beach. Everything else—the heat blooming across her face, the shackles chafing her wrists raw, the faint metallic taste on her tongue—might as well be happening to someone else. All she feels now is the slick heat of Fenris’s blood pouring between her fingers. He tried to say her name—

“Here she fucking goes again. Think I know why your kind cut their mages’ tongues off, Kasra,” one laughs.

“Not _my_ kind,” the Tal-Vashoth— _Kasra_ —snaps back, and the snorts and snickers die out at that. She gestures to one of the pirates. “Magebane.”

Hawke understands, too late, that Magebane isn’t his name. “No,” she gasps. Her throat is raw, her lips chapped bloody, and she has to grind the words out of her mouth. “No, please—please don’t do this—I’ll be good, I swear—”

They ignore her. Magebane, whatever his name is, empties the contents of a vial onto a rag, and Hawke just has time to fill her lungs with briny, acrid air before he presses it to her face. There’s a dark, vicious light in his eyes: he’s enjoying this, the way she’s struggling against him to free herself from his grip; a brief, dry spark of magic flickers to life under her breastbone then sputters out again, and in the end she has no choice but to breathe. The magebane reeks of spoiled meat, of rot and corruption, and for half a heartbeat the stench takes her back to Lothering, the day the darkspawn horde emerged from the tree line like shadows at sunset.

Magebane pats her cheek. “Good girl,” he says, and Hawke doubles over and throws up on his feet. The back of her mouth tastes like deathroot washed down with the sludge from Darktown, and her magic gives one last dull flicker before fading for good.

Cursing, Magebane shakes the vomit off his already filthy boots. Another raider—a dwarf, the casteless brand crisscrossing his cheekbone—snickers, earning himself a wounded glare. “Worse than a sodding spitter, that one,” he says, then throws a look over his shoulder. “She even the right one? I expected the Champion of Kirkwall, not some sniveling little bitch.”

Hawke follows his line of sight, and her stomach clenches when she sees what—or rather _who_ —the raiders are all looking at. Rosalba stands farther aft, that long sable braid whipping in the sea wind, the loose hem of her trousers shivering as the ship starts making headway. “I am never wrong,” she says, her face a cool, blank mask.

A red haze veils Hawke’s sight. With Fenris and her magic gone, something dark and unfamiliar fills the spaces left empty inside her. This is beyond anger, she realizes. This is hatred, sharp and twisted as thorny shoots of felandaris. “And what if I’m not the Champion? What if I’m just some sniveling little bitch?”

“Then I’m tying you two back to back and flinging you overboard,” Kasra answers, eyes flicking from Hawke to Rosalba then back again.

“I say we keep her,” Magebane supplies with a crooked grin. Torchlight falls on the curve of his shaved skull, tattooed with rough, crude designs. “Bet she’s pretty under all that gunk. And tight as a maid, if all she’s been having is an elf.”

Hawke tastes bile at the back of her throat. That dark pulsing thing burrows deeper inside her, like a tangle of roots spreading wide beneath the earth and choking the life out of everything else. She wants to hurt him—she wants to hurt _them_ , all of them and with her bare hands if she must, make them pay for what they did then set sail in their blood.

The corner of his mouth slides farther upwards. “ _Now_ I see her, the Champion who had the oxmen shitting themselves.” He cups her chin with one hand and forces her to look at him. “Could do without the vomit breath, but I bet you’re a pretty sight from the back too.”

She spits in his face. Magebane howls in outrage, wipes the gob of spit off his eyes, then clenches that same hand into a fist. Tattooed knuckles flash black and bronze in the torchlight, but Hawke doesn’t flinch. If this is a nightmare, maybe that’ll rattle her out of it.

But Magebane’s fist never hits, and Hawke doesn’t wake up. “ _Enough_ ,” Kasra says, one hand clutching his wrist. Her grip seems effortless as she slowly pulls it back, the bend of his arm creeping towards unnatural. Her face looks carved out of metal in the orange flicker of the lanterns; Hawke thinks, with a sharp, unexpected pang, of the bronzes in Kirkwall, the grim determination sculpted on the masters’ faces, the low relief of slaves in chains dragging themselves around the plinth at their feet.

Magebane’s eyes bulge, and his cheeks puff out with a barely contained cry of pain. Hawke expects the crunch of an elbow or shoulder popping out of its socket any second, but Kasra lets go, and he drops to one knee with a grunt. “You said it’d be _easy_ ,” he bellows, clutching his arm to himself, “but we got _slaughtered_ out there, all by that fucking knife-ear—”

“You think I don’t know that? You think I’d have gone for it if I’d known?” Kasra bends herself so that her gaze is level with his, her face inches from his. Magebane’s eyes drop to the planks after a moment, his silence almost contrite. Then she swivels around to face Rosalba instead; Hawke can only see the plait of white hair at the back of her head and the sharp curve of her horns, but the anger rolls off her like the heat of a blaze. “And you, did you see that? Did you _know_ we’d get massacred?”

It takes Hawke a moment to understand what she means. Rosalba faces her, impassive—quite a feat, considering the Tal-Vashoth’s stature and strength. “I promised you the Champion, and you have her.”

“And at what cost? She’s not worth the crew I lost to get her in the first place,” Kasra snaps back. There’s a jest somewhere in there about a skeleton crew, but Hawke bites the inside of her cheeks. If she opens her mouth now, she might start screaming instead and never stop. “This better be worth it, or I’m handing you to the Seekers along with her.”

Hawke flinches at that. _I’ve had the pleasure of a lengthy talk with one Seeker Pentaghast_ , Varric wrote in one of his letters, months before she and Fenris settled in that little cottage near Redcliffe. They were staying at a roadside inn near the Nevarran border at the time, she remembers, Fenris’s white-knuckled fist belying his impassive face as Hawke read the letter out loud, and started their long journey southward the next day. Reading between the lines, this Pentaghast went to great lengths to squeeze the truth out of Varric, and a thick bubble of anger wells up anew inside Hawke, black as hot tar. _Big fan of yours, wanted to know every detail that didn’t make it into my_ Tale of the Champion. _Wouldn’t be surprised if she tried to track you down to get your autograph_.

The Seekers of Truth. Hawke doesn’t know much about them, except that she wants them—and the Templars, and the rebel mages, and Maker knows who else is on her heels— _gone_. Every time she thinks she’s outrun their blurred presence at her back, every time she lets herself believe she can start over, they catch up to her. They didn’t even have to this time: she was so ready to think of this place as home she stepped into that gaping maw herself, arms thrown wide open.

Bloody fool. What did she expect, after the farmstead where she grew up, after Lothering, and Kirkwall, and the thatched cottage near Redcliffe? _You’re looking for home, but it’s only the place that changes_ , Isabela said, but Hawke never learns, so still she wished, still she _hoped_ : a little house on stilts on the Rivaini coast, palm leaves scattering the sunlight into a thousand chips of gold at her bare feet, and Fenris always at her side, steady as an anchor—

His name tears through her like an arrowhead. The agony doubles her over, and she’s powerless to resist when Magebane drags her down to the ship’s hold, his grip too tight, his fingers digging hard into the meat of her arm. She’s relieved—grateful even, pathetically so—when Kasra sends him above deck again and assigns guard duty to Mekas the dwarf instead. They shackle her to a pillar, and Hawke lets herself slide down against it, head falling back till Kasra’s footsteps start towards the companionway.

A wild, primal fear fills Hawke at the prospect of the imminent silence and what it might let in. “Could I get a bucket, please?” she says, just to say something, just to fend off the memory of shattered bone under her fingers a few seconds longer. “I get seasick.”

Kasra stops halfway up the companionway. Her eyes are two yellow rings, blazing dark and dangerous within black sclera. “Do you also need a pillow and a duvet? This isn’t a fucking cruise, Champion.”

Mekas grabs a pail sitting in a corner of the hold and drops it between Hawke’s knees. He ignores her whispered thanks, then shrugs off the glare Kasra shoots in his direction. “Sorry, Cap’n. Don’t feel like cleaning up the mess if she pukes herself.” That earns him another halfhearted glare, but Kasra leaves without another word, and Mekas hauls himself onto a crate before examining the gash on his brow in the reflection of his dagger’s blade.

The hatch closes behind Kasra, and the hold goes quiet except for the plaintive, haunted creaks of the swaying hull. It’s only then that Hawke notices someone else in the hold with them: she stands by the companionway, hands behind her back, the lantern teasing crimson strands from the coil of sable hair cascading down her shoulder. The dim, flickering light twists her mouth into a rictus.

“Why?” Hawke asks, her voice a dry rasp. “Was it just for the coin?”

Rosalba takes a step forward. “Do you know of Afsaana, Champion?” she asks lightly, like they were talking over tea. The name of a city, Hawke knows, but more than that she can’t say. Not that her answer matters, she suspects. “It is a small city on the Bay of Rialto, between Antiva and Rivain. The Antivans would leave us alone as long as they could buy their pearls and nacre, so many of us still openly practiced the old ways. There I was born and there I raised my children, and there I was looked up to for my gifts.

“But after what you did in Kirkwall, Templars came to Afsaana. To restore order, they claimed. Do you know how they did that?”

Hawke doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t want to _know_ —there’s no space left inside her for someone else’s pain, but the silence stretches, cruel and patient, till she brings herself to shake her head.

“They burned us out of hiding,” Rosalba answers, something tattered raw at the edges of her voice. “They tortured my neighbour, the woman who looked after my children whenever I was gone, till her husband revealed himself as a mage. They put him to the blade, and when some of us came forward voluntarily, they took what they called _precautions_ ”—she raises one of her hands, torchlight spilling between the broken bones like a river around rocks—“and my daughter was punished for the crime of standing up for her mother.”

Hawke shuts her eyes, but there’s no escaping Rosalba’s voice, every word a fresh barb pressed into the wound already torn into her. “ _Stop_ ,” she sobs despite herself.

A hard bark of a laugh. “You want me to stop?” Rosalba sneers, a brittle crack to her voice. “It will never _stop_. For me, it will always be like this. I will never see my children and my hometown again, and I will spend the rest of my life selling amulets to people like _you_ , who think the Sight is only good for a laugh.”

“It’s like this for me too,” Hawke retorts, the memory of fear clawing at her throat like a newborn thing. The wall of Templar plate before her, that whirlpool sucking up her magic, the whisper of a blade pulled out of its scabbard. “It’s like this for all of us.”

“There is no _us_ , Champion. _We_ walked free before you called the southern mages to arms. _We_ are paying the price of your freedom. If handing you over to the Chantry will appease them, then it has to be done.”

“It won’t stop them and you know it,” Hawke says on a hard, shuddering breath.

Rosalba considers her. That light again at the bottom of her eyes, like embers flaring back to life. “Perhaps not, but it will avenge my daughter. Pray you never suffer as I have,” she says, then folds herself in a bow. “Good night, Champion.”

Light fans out around her silhouette as she climbs the companionway stairs. The hatch shuts behind her, and Mekas returns to patching his wounds, doing a piss-poor job of pretending he wasn’t just listening to every word. The _Fury_ groans, the lantern swaying on its chain with every heave of the hull as they sail Maker knows where.

Hawke lets her head droop, her eyes pressed against her folded knees. Her shift is stiff and rank with blood and saltwater; she can still hear Fenris trying to say her name, and the last thing she’s aware of before dipping into a fitful, restless sleep is her tears, scalding their way through her lashes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I keep saying this but: there WILL be a happy ending to this fic, I promise! Thank you so much for reading, and as always, I love hearing from you! Kudos and comments welcome and appreciated, and feel free to come say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com) as well! <3


	6. Isabela

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Hawke abducted by Kasra Adaar’s crew and Fenris grievously wounded, Isabela has a decision to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for yet another late update! I have a hard time adhering with a strictly weekly schedule, so realistically updates may take between one and two weeks. Thank you for your patience, and I hope it’s worth the wait! <3
> 
> Please note that this chapter opens with a sex scene and contains references to sexual situations.

Isabela would never _say_ it, but The Black Mamba’s moniker suits him well, and not just for the tongue. He moves like a snake too, tattooed body rippling on top of hers, one hand clutching the headboard while the other works between her legs.

Ah, Llomerryn. Cutthroats and thieves: they all brag about their obscenely clever hands, but too many don’t put half as much effort into a woman’s pleasure as they do into picking locks. Got to give it to him, though, Pieron walks the walk. She wouldn’t trust him on her ship, but in her bed? Different story.

When she comes for the third time that night, she has no voice left to cry out.

His hips smack against hers once or twice, then Pieron pulls out just in time to spend himself on her stomach. He bends down to lick the warm, glistening streaks off her skin, sending one last pulse of heat flaring through her at the sight. How refreshing—a man who cleans after himself. “I missed you, you glorious thing,” he says in a rough whisper, panting against her skin. “Llomerryn just ain’t the same without you.”

Her limbs slacken again, the heat pent inside her fading to a pleasant warmth that leaves her tingling all over. “You know I always end up coming back,” she answers, while the prongs of his split tongue swirl around the gold bar pierced through her nipple. His cock throbs against her thigh, the shaft inked with black scales under her own slick—no pirate has ever been accused of being too subtle, but Pieron’s in a class of his own. “Don’t you go all soft on me now.”

He chuckles against her neck. “Wouldn’t take much to remedy that,” he says into her ear, the fork of his tongue swiping her lobe. Then he tilts her face towards his and kisses her hard, his mouth tasting of spiced rum and semen. It’s so hopelessly _filthy_ the ebbing wisps of pleasure flow back into the pit of her stomach as his tongue moves with hers. “And glad to hear it,” he says between their mouths.

She blinks at him blearily, having long lost the thread of the conversation. “Hm?”

“Would hate for you to pick that Champion of yours over us.”

Again with Hawke. Isabela lets her head fall back against her pillow and throws one arm over her eyes. “Jealous, are we? I’m starting to suspect you’ve been fantasizing about her all the while.”

A chuckle, then a swig from the bottle of rum on the bedside table. “With you right here and naked at that? Nah. Although if your friends ever felt like joining us …”

Isabela snorts. “Fenris doesn’t share. Although I’d love to see you ask him.”

There’s a pause, long enough that she peeks under her arm to look at him. Pieron’s frowning at the bottle, tattooed knuckles wrapped tight around the neck. His skin is still dewy with sweat and glimmers like oiled teak in the glow of the lamp. “That’s what I don’t get,” he says, pushing his damp hair back with one hand. “What the fuck do you have in common with these people?”

Isabela heaves a sigh. Nothing, obviously. Not a thing—except _they_ were the ones at her side during those seven years she spent adrift in Kirkwall, while she might as well have been dead to the Felicisima Armada. Dead or soon to be, for those hoping to get in Castillon’s good books. No surprise there: you don’t join the Raiders unless you’re at least a little bit of an opportunistic, backstabbing hypocrite, but that didn’t make the pill any easier to swallow. Pieron can claim he’s missed her all he wants. It was Hawke—Hawke and Fenris and Varric and the rest—who had her back when no one else did.

Oh, if he’d seen her in Kirkwall. He’d never have known that woman, standing up to Templars, fighting slavers, defending widows and orphans, all for a smile and a pair of pretty blues. And the worst part? Part of her misses it. Part of her misses fighting at Hawke’s side, fighting for something other than coin, fighting for _something_ , period.

Three years at the helm of the _Pearl Oyster_ , and it’s still not like before. Her choice was made years ago, she sees that now. She chose Hawke over the Raiders when she returned to Kirkwall with that bloody tome of what’s his face tucked under her arm.

But it’s not like Pieron would get it, so Isabela saves her breath.

“Give Hawke a break,” she says instead, stretching herself on the bed and wriggling her toes. “I think the sun’s gotten to her head. And Fenris is … well, Fenris.” She rolls over on her side, rests her chin on the crook of her elbow, and grins up at Pieron. “Part of the brooding charm.”

He chuckles, takes another swig of rum, then hands her the bottle. The rum tastes like burnt sugar, scorching its sweet trail down her gullet before settling into her stomach. She tips the bottle back for another sip, and nearly splashes it down her face when a howl tears down the hallway.

Something slams hard into the door.

They’re both clutching their respective daggers, edges braced towards the door. A mist of plaster is falling from the rafters; there’s rum dribbling down Isabela’s chin and breast, and an amber stain spreading on the bedsheets where the bottle tipped over. She returns it to the bedside table one-handed and crouches on the mattress, her dagger still raised.

“The fuck?” Pieron says over the frantic scratching noise coming from the door.

Another howl, sending a shudder down Isabela’s spine.

“Hawke’s mabari,” she blurts out, and a different shade of dread slips over whatever relief she might’ve felt.

Pieron takes this to be good news. “Got locked out, looks like. Guess that means your friends have made up,” he says, dropping his head back on the pillow.

How she wishes he were right. Hawke would sooner sleep outside herself, though, and it’d take a lot more for Maker’s Bark to make a scene: this is a grizzled Fereldan warhound that’s seen a Blight _and_ Kirkwall, not some yapping Orlesian lapdog. Isabela kicks off the bedsheets and makes for the door; the hound is still scratching and howling outside, and someone yells a string of obscenities down the hallway.

The door nearly knocks her flat on her arse as it swings open, and Maker’s Bark enters the room like a battering ram. His jaws close on the sheet carelessly wrapped around her body, and Isabela stumbles after him into the hallway. “I’m naked, you mongrel,” she says, tugging back at the sheet while Pieron bursts out laughing somewhere behind her. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

She’s being an idiot, expecting an answer from a dog, but then Maker’s Bark _cries_ , a high-pitched noise of anguish, and Isabela’s stomach plummets to the soles of her bare feet.

The rest is a blur. She doesn’t even remember squeezing herself into her chemise before bolting after the old mabari, her daggers tucked in her boots. Her name slices clean through the night: Pieron, calling out to her from the window as she flies down the rickety staircase outside the inn. Isabela ignores him, and then she’s elbowing her way through the narrow alleys of the market, curses and catcalls darting in her wake.

They run, run till the dusty tiles turn to sand. Her sockless feet sweat and chafe inside her boots, and she swears under her breath every time she loses her footing. A brisk, briny wind whistles high in her ear, tousles her hair and sends it whipping in her face; Isabela spits a stray strand out of her mouth, and keeps running half-blind after the mabari. She can _smell_ their destination before long, fire and ash and the thunderstorm scent of magic tickling her nose even through the reek of low tide.

The sharp iron tang of blood hits her last. Her heart skips a beat when she spots the bodies, then thunders again inside her chest.

Fenris’s handiwork: most have been killed after one precise strike, a few with holes in their chests or throats. Some aren’t as lucky and fell to Hawke’s magic instead, their burned shapes twisted like driftwood. Familiar faces stare up at her as she follows the hound’s winding path among the fallen: Merle, Sid, Loony Lonny—men she’s never had much love for but who’d been permanent fixtures of Llomerryn till now. A pang of something complicated stabs her in the gut, halfway between contempt and grief.

Bloody idiots, all of them.

A few looters are already doing their thing, pawing the dead’s pockets, knocking out gold teeth with the point of a dagger, gathering weapons like flowers in a field. Her gaze almost glides past the Qunari and elf crouched over a body; then Isabela spots the silver blur of Fenris’s hair in the thin, watery moonlight, and for a moment she thinks she’s going to be sick.

Her blade’s in her hand, then _not_. A flick of her wrist sends it flying through the air, and it sinks hilt-deep into the Qunari’s shoulder. His features are still halfway into a pained expression when she’s upon him, tossing a fistful of sand into his face. The elf stammers something, but the toe of her boot sinks into his stomach and sends him sprawled on the sand.

“ _Get off him!_ ” she yells, twin daggers in each hand, points aimed at the two scavengers. Maker’s Bark has his teeth bared and his hackles raised, a low, threatening growl rumbling through the quiet. One swift motion and Isabela can slit both their throats; one word and the hound will tear them apart. “One move and you’re both dead,” she warns.

The elf wheezes and dry-heaves, clutching his stomach. The Qunari spits and tries to blink the sand out of his eyes. “Stay your blade, _bas_ ,” he says, not quite facing her. Under other circumstances the sight might’ve been amusing, but her brain is swimming, and she almost misses the fact he just spoke Qunlat. The real deal, then, not just another heathen who happens to have horns. “Your friend is alive. We mean no harm.”

She notices the makeshift stretcher next to him, and it’s only when relief crashes into her with a deafening roar that Isabela realizes she thought Fenris dead. A painful gulp of air rushes through her loosening throat, and it’s all she can do not to crumble in the sand when the beach starts listing under her feet. His chest is rising and falling with slow, even breaths; she can’t spot a wound, but he’s lying in what looks to be a pool of his own blood, his hair and shirt soaked through with it.

But he’s alive. She can work with alive.

Everything inside her screams at her not to, but she decides to trust the two men. She returns her daggers to her boots and drops to one knee in the sand, glad for the warhound’s presence. Even the Qunari seems unnerved by the two hundred pounds of teeth and muscle growling at him.

“Fenris,” Isabela says, close to his ear, but there’s not even the merest twitch of an eyelash in answer. She calls his name out a few more times, then heaves a frustrated sigh. “What in the Void happened?” she asks the two men.

“Raiders—” the elf starts, then stops to wheeze, face contorted in pain. “They—”

He retches again, but manages to keep it down. The Qunari raises squinting, leaking eyes at her. “They took the bas-saarebas.”

It takes Isabela a moment to even know what he’s talking about. “The bas—you mean _Hawke_. Took her _where_?”

The elf coughs and manages to let go of his stomach long enough to point one shaking finger at the sea. Isabela whips her head around to scan the line of the horizon, rippling under a waxing moon and a smattering of stars. In the distance, the silhouette of a ship glides over the waves, the barest glimmer of her lanterns flickering like wisp wraiths. She racks her brain to remember which crew Merle and the others belonged to, but barely anything trickles through the storm in her head, and her information’s probably out of date, anyway. “Their banner,” she blurts out. “Did you see it?”

The elf shakes his head. “No, but their leader was Tal-Vashoth,” he says. The Qunari spits at the word, and Isabela has the feeling it’s not because of the sand this time. “A woman.”

She blows out a sharp breath through her teeth. Kasra fucking Adaar. This just keeps getting better and better. To think she was sitting on Pieron’s face while this entire mess was unfolding.

“Maker’s _balls_ , Fenris, how could you let her get the better of you?” Isabela mutters, then looks up at the Viddathari elf and blinks. “I know you,” she says, his features familiar now that they’ve started easing again. The burnished copper of his hair is faded to rust in the faraway torchlight, but she recognizes that young, wide-eyed face now. “Got your coin picked at the market.”

Even in the dark she sees a flush creeping up his cheeks. “My name is Vat, and this is Kaaras,” he adds, gesturing towards his companion. “I had to do something. The—the bas-saarebas healed him, but he needs help.”

_That bas-saarebas killed your Arishok_ , Isabela almost retorts, but she swallows back the bitter surge rising in her throat. Instead she gives the tip of Fenris’s ear another pinch. “Don’t do this to me, you bastard. Wake _up_.”

“We can look after him,” Vat says.

Isabela snickers. “The Qunari, look after him? So you can brainwash him the second he wakes up?”

No freedom with the Qunari, Isabela knows as much. Not even a single thought between the lot of them that hasn’t been fed to them by their prophet. You’re one of them or you’re not, in which case your only worth is as a potential convert: her mother made that very clear the day she sold her off because Isabela refused to turn in the ability to make decisions for herself at the door of their temple.

Kaaras clenches his jaw and pulls the knife out of his arm, apparently opting to ignore her; the elf looks down, as though in shame. “He will be free to choose the path he walks, as do we all.”

“Then why? Why do you even _care_?”

“ _As-eb vashe-qalab_ ,” Kaaras groans, tossing her knife into the clumps of bloody sand at her feet.

_This is bullshit_. Isabela opens her mouth to agree, but the words send something flaring in Vat’s eyes. “Because it’s the right thing to do,” the elf retorts, and for once he’s not tripping over his words. This, at least, he believes. “Because he helped me.”

Hawke gone, Fenris showing no sign of coming to, and Isabela caught in the middle, stretched thin as an old rag. What can she do? She can sew wounds closed, not bring anyone back from the brink of death, and if she wastes time looking around for a healer worth their salt on this Maker-damned island, then Kasra will be long gone. Not that Isabela trusts anyone here as far as she can stab them: too many ways it could all go tits-up were she to entrust them with the life of a friend.

At least—and she can’t believe she’s even _thinking_ this—the Qunari are steadfast in their resolve.

“Shit. _Shit_.” Isabela drops her head into her hands and tugs at the roots of her hair, fingernails biting into her scalp. “How long are you staying on Llomerryn?” she asks, trying to stamp out the waver in her voice.

“We leave for Kont-aar at dawn,” Kaaras answers.

At the other _fucking_ end of the country.

Isabela takes a deep breath, and it comes out a sob, embarrassingly enough. Hawke would never forgive her. Likely neither would Fenris. Nothing she can do for him, though, and every minute wasted is another mile between Isabela and Kasra’s ship. If there’s another option, she doesn’t see it.

She’s got no other choice.

She pulls herself to her feet and starts pacing, trying to get a grip on herself, but Vat’s and Kaaras’s eyes follow her like an itch, and after a few steps she whirls around, grabs the elf by the collar, and rests her blade against the light throb in his throat.

“Listen to me, you little shit,” she says in a low snarl. “I’ll be coming for him. I’ll be coming for him as soon as I’ve made those raiders pay, so don’t you dare try to—to _reeducate_ him. Otherwise I will hunt down every single person you’ve ever cared for, make you watch as I gut them like fish, and save you for last.”

Vat stares up at her, eyes wide, mouth hanging open; Kaaras watches her under a beetling brow, blood oozing between the fingers of the hand clasped over his shoulder. She twists her fist into his collar and slides her blade up his throat to bring her point home, forcing him to lift his chin up high. “So if you’re lying,” she continues in an undertone, “or think yourself clever and have some notion of fucking me over, I’m giving you one last chance to admit it.”

The Viddathari swallows once, hard. “I’m not lying, I promise,” he says in a tremulous squeak. “I just want to help him.”

Isabela holds his gaze for a few moments—flames, just how _young_ is he?—then shoves him back. Maker’s Bark lets out an inquisitive whine when she thrusts her finger in his direction. “The hound is staying with him,” she announces. Kaaras opens his mouth to argue, but a sharp glance in his direction shuts him up. “My name is Isabela. Remember it, Qunari.” Then she casts one last look at Fenris, still lying in the puddle of drying, darkening blood as though he were sleeping. “And you, don’t you dare _dying_.”

And then she spins on her heel and runs back to the inn, not sparing a single glance over her shoulder, not sparing a single thought as to whether that was all a huge mistake.

* * *

Isabela finds her quartermaster at the Birds of Paradise, balls-deep in one of said birds, and just barely avoids the elbow he aims at her nose when she grabs him under the armpits to pull him out.

The girl’s legs snap shut faster than a flytrap. “Cap’n?” Malik blurts out, blinking up at Isabela.

“No time to explain. We’re setting sail _now._ ” Bless the man for rolling along with it: he pulls his trousers over his erection, then steals a kiss from the stunned prostitute. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise,” Isabela calls out over her shoulder, already halfway out the door.

Her crew is scattered all over: a cursory sweep of the likeliest establishments turns up a few in the perfumed rooms of Llomerryn’s famed whorehouses, and a few more drinking and smoking themselves silly in the bars and taverns. Isabela leaves the insensate and the stragglers behind, though she lets Pieron tag along. Maker knows she’ll need as many hands on deck as she can afford to give chase to the _Fury_.

“Lay aloft and loose all sails!” she shouts, once everyone’s climbed aboard and hoisted the longboats. To their credit, her crew sheds the lingering mists of drink and sex almost at once: whether it’s sailing or sex, muscle memory will at least get you by. They scale the shrouds to release the sails from their gaskets; clewlines and buntlines are let go, the sheets hauled tight and belayed, and the halyards manned till her ship’s sails billow from bow to stern.

Hands move to the capstan bars; the _Pearl Oyster_ lurches as the winds catch in her sails and push her astern, and Isabela keeps her eyes riveted to the invisible line of the horizon as she falls off to port and gathers way. The usual din rises all around her, but brings none of the usual comfort: the flap of canvas like the wings of a giant bird, the moans and groans of the hull cleaving its way through the waves, the hails and swearing as all hands man their stations. She sends Pieron to the crow’s nest with a spyglass, mostly to keep him off her while she scans the dark waves ahead, as though she could summon the _Fury_ like a demon from the dark recesses of the Fade.

“Care to explain what’s that all about, Cap’n?” someone says behind her.

Isabela looks over her shoulder to find Malik standing there on the foredeck, one graying eyebrow lifted in a quizzical arc. She turns back to the sea and leans into the high whistle of the wind. “Adaar’s crew took Hawke,” she replies.

Malik doesn’t ask why—the answer is obvious, so obvious Isabela should’ve seen it coming. She should’ve known better than underestimating Llomerryn. “What do I tell the crew?”

“What they want to hear. Tell them they’ll get paid.” With what coin? She’ll figure it out. “I’ll make it up to them somehow.”

He leaves her to her thoughts. Clouds stretch over the moon; for a moment the water is black as ink, one dark sheet unfurling as far as the eye can see. The bowsprit bobs up and down, splitting the winds.

Kasra has to be headed for Dairsmuid or Ayesleigh. At least that’s what Isabela would do in her place, and she prays to the Maker her instincts are right. She knows enough about Kasra’s four-masted barque to know the _Pearl Oyster_ is the faster ship, but Kasra may well have banked on deceit instead of speed, opting for a roundabout route or taking the sails down, dousing the lanterns, and lying in wait till they pass her by. For a moment she considers climbing to the crow’s nest herself, but Pieron knows he’s in for a good keelhauling if he slacks off.

Still. Not like she’d sleep, anyway, so Isabela stays on deck and keeps an eye out for the _Fury_ till a merciless sun hangs high overhead.

The wait is torture. They even spot two ships, just to rub salt into the wound: fat-hulled merchant vessels likely en route to Antiva City, two perfectly fine prizes that her crew’s obviously itching to give chase to. Not that they have the numbers to take on a full crew, anyway, even a civilian one, and it’s only because Isabela’s seen the wreckage Fenris and Hawke made of Kasra’s men that she knows they stand a chance.

Her eyelids are drooping, and she’s about to give up and retire to her cabin when at last the call she’s been waiting for reaches her ears over the lapping waves.

“Sail ho! _Fury_!”

A spyglass materializes in her hand. Starboard: a ship the size of a grain of rice. No sound except her and the sea, breathing as one. Triumph floods her veins like a long drag off a water pipe when she recognizes the four masts of the _Fury_ , and the commands roll off her tongue, easy as sweet nothings into a lover’s ear: “Crack on after that ship! Don’t let her get away!”

Her fatigue forgotten, she flies down the deck, yelling her orders. The members of her crew lunge to draw up sails, then haul and slack braces to wear to starboard. The ship heels low as she pushes into the wind; a spray of seawater rises to greet Isabela as the _Pearl Oyster_ turns, and then she’s running before the wind, her sails filling with a satisfying whoosh.

They have a long chase ahead on the waters of the Bay of Rialto. Isabela has her men trim the yards to catch the merest breeze and sends others down into the bilge to move cargo around and ballast the ship. The _Fury_ is faster than she has any right to be, though, and she makes Isabela work for every inch. By the time the _Pearl Oyster_ finally closes the distance between them, the sun has long gone down again, a wedge of moon risen in its stead.

Isabela’s so intent on the chase, she doesn’t notice something’s wrong till both ships are nearly abreast. Her prey is so close she can taste it, and all she feels is the headlong rush of the hunt coming to an end. At first she thinks Kasra means to force a battle between the two: she never bothered putting out the lanterns, but as the _Pearl Oyster_ draws near Isabela sees the barque yawing strangely, as though—

“Shit,” Malik says. A sudden flare through the dark, then flames rising high. Isabela peers through her spyglass just in time to see a sailor throwing himself overboard to douse the fire shrouding him. The wind blows the screams away from them, and the scene unfolds in perfect silence, so uncanny Isabela might’ve chalked it up to the lack of sleep were it not for the prayer Malik intones under his breath.

She looks up from the spyglass and drops her arms to her sides. “What the hell did you do this time, Hawke?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and as always, I love hearing from you! Kudos and comments welcome and appreciated, and feel free to come say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com) as well! <3


	7. Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabela had no choice but to entrust an unconscious Fenris to the Qunari while she goes after Kasra and her crew; meanwhile, Hawke is chained to a pillar in the hold of the _Fury_ and desperately trying to turn her fortune around …

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, it’s here! I don’t know why this chapter was so hard to finish, but hey, at least it’s done! This month’s been pretty crazy, but hopefully things will calm down in February and I can get back to a more reasonable update schedule. Thank you for sticking with me, and I hope it was worth the wait!
> 
> Content warnings for vomiting (Hawke is on a ship, so you probably get the drill by now, haha.)

“Hawke,” Fenris whispers in her ear, and Hawke jerks awake.

The pail tucked between her knees topples over. Cold, slimy vomit slides down her leg, and she rights the pail again just in time to double over and retch water and bile. Clumped strands of hair stick to her face; the acidic reek twists her stomach, but it’s long empty, and after dry-heaving once or twice she lets herself fall back against the pillar, exhausted. She hurts all over, and without fresh air or a horizon to look at, the seasickness is worse than ever. She tries to ignore it and cling to the fading memory of Fenris’s voice instead, warm and deep as a forest in summer, but it slips out of her grasp. Just a shard of dream, dropping straight through her sleeping mind, then gone.

Sitting on a lone crate across the hold, Mekas chuckles. “Not your day, eh, Champ?” His boots hover a foot or two above the planks, but Hawke can’t find it in herself to be amused. The gash on his brow looks uncomfortably similar to the grin slanting his ruddy face, like it might sprout teeth any second.

He must be bored out of his mind. Till now he’s kept to himself, ignoring her even when she’s been throwing up or sobbing, or both, more often than not.

Hawke spits into the bucket. “Nor yours, it seems,” she says after a few tries, her voice hoarse with thirst and disuse. It burns when she clears her throat. “That wound looks nasty.”

A shadow flits through his gaze. “No thanks to your elf,” he grunts in reply.

No point bracing herself for the fresh surge of agony that comes with his retort. A leaf would stand more chance against the gale, so she lets it spin and toss her about in its whirlwind, keeping her eyes closed as she breathes the foul, stale air of the hold. Not that it helps. Her eyes are as dry as her throat; they burn under her lids, and even without the sickening sway of the lamp, she still sees the reddish glint of Kasra’s morning star, still sees the sharp twist of Fenris’s head as he falls, that hollow light in his gaze and the sand turning black with his blood. The memory still sticks to her fingers, and she tries to rub off the blood caking her hands despite the shackles, to little avail.

Not the first time Fenris takes a blow meant for her. Maybe it was inevitable; maybe it was a matter of time till one did some real damage, but what good is her magic if she can’t even protect him? She should’ve been faster. She should’ve been able to raise that barrier in time, she should’ve felt that compulsion spell taking root in her mind, she should’ve said _something_ , back at the market.

Andraste help her, she should never have come here with him.

The sea cradles them in its cupped hands, and the hull moans with its every heave. Hawke hopes for tears and whatever fleeting relief they might afford, but they’ve long run out, though the pain hasn’t. Funny how _that_ never runs out; always some fresh hurt as soon as old wounds start scabbing over. The magebane must be keeping the demons at bay: that sort of pain should be as a beacon in the night, but the whispers are quiet now. Maybe they know they’ve missed their chance. It would’ve been easy, so easy to accept their offer while Fenris lay dying beneath her hands, and some wounded, twisted part of her is raging at herself for passing up the chance. But she promised—she _promised_ —and though it shattered every last piece of her, at least that promise remains unbroken. Everything has a price, and this is hers: this pain, this guilt, this _grief_.

_No_ , says a voice, somewhere deep inside her. _He’s alive. You know he’s alive_.

Hawke heaves a deep, shuddering breath, then opens her eyes.

She’s careful not to tip the pail again as she stretches her legs in front of her. Her wrists hurt: the shackles have already chafed the skin raw, but she forces herself to wriggle the sensation back into her fingertips, wincing when pins and needles prickle their way down her hands. Mekas is busy cleaning the cut on his brow with a rag and a bottle of hard liquor, cursing the Stone and half the Ancestors interred in Orzammar under his breath. It needs magic, or sutures at the very least; it gapes wide open, and glistens in the light of the oil lamp at his feet. A gruff man if she’s ever met one, all bluster and grunts, but he did give her the pail when she asked …

She lets her bruised mind unfurl from its hiding place, careful not to nudge her memories of the past few hours. No magic, no weapons, nothing she can do with her hands tied behind a pillar.

Nothing except for one thing.

“Can’t this Rosalba heal you?” Hawke asks, trying to keep her voice appropriately nonchalant. “It’d be easy enough for a mage.”

His hand stops. He glances at her from under bushy, reddish eyebrows; the oil lamp rives deep lines into his brow and threads his beard with copper, and the look he throws her could sear skin at a hundred paces.

There’s her answer: he won’t _let_ Rosalba heal him. Can’t blame him, really. Hawke pretends not to have noticed the glare. “I could do it, if it weren’t for the magebane,” she continues.

Mekas snorts, then returns to his reflection on the blade of his dagger. “Nice try, Champ.”

“It was worth a try,” she says with an apologetic smile and a one-shouldered shrug. She might as well be considering her next move at Wicked Grace without having taken a single look at her hand, though, so she casts her net at random. “So, Mekas, is it? How does a dwarf end up on a pirate ship? Smith, miner, trader, sure, but sailor? First I’ve ever heard of, I admit.”

Mekas flicks her a glance. “You talk too much. I liked you better when you were puking.”

Hawke shifts against the pillar, wincing when the shackles bite into the abused skin of her wrists, but making herself even remotely comfortable is impossible. The hull creaks and rattles to its own strange rhythm; the seasickness crests with each roll and sway of the sea, and for a moment she thinks she’s going to be sick again, but it passes after a few breaths.

_Think_ , she wills herself. Rosalba may be out for revenge, but she’d wager the pirates are in it for something else.

“My best friend’s a dwarf too, you know,” she tries again, when she’s sure she’s not going to throw up instead. “Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

This time he bites. “There’s quite a few of us on the surface,” he retorts.

“Right. Sorry, that was awfully rude of me. He’s a famous author, though, and his family’s got a seat on the Merchants’ Guild and everything,” she continues, mentally apologizing to Varric for waving his name around like that. “Varric Tethras?”

She can _feel_ the effort it costs him not to look at her then. The name, tarnished though it is in Orzammar, drags all of its gilded implications through his mind: fortunes being made and unmade around granite tables, business empires rising and falling in the span of a single Guild meeting, vaults filled with gold and slips of papers worth just as much. “Hearing him it’s all masons and nug breeders,” she continues, letting the words dribble out of her mouth, “but then again he’s always been good at just half-saying things. Talked me into this Deep Roads expedition once. ‘High risk, high reward,’ Bartrand—that’s his brother, Andraste keep him—kept saying, which is where we made our fortunes, or _re_ made in their case, I suppose. Maker’s breath, what a mess that entire thing was.” She blinks up at him. “Have you ever seen a rock wraith? Tough bastards, those.”

Mekas blows out a sharp, noisy exhale. “What did I say? Now shut up, or I’m gagging you and you can choke on your own puke until we get to Dairsmuid.”

He curses at his own slip, and Hawke falls quiet, her heart pounding in her ears. Dairsmuid, the capital of Rivain, right across the Bay of Rialto from Antiva City. She has a day at most to change her fortune; she can only hope she’s had time to plant the golden seeds of Varric’s name and wealth, and that they’ll take root in Mekas’s imagination, blooming with the promise of riches.

A restless sleep snatches her mid-thought, and Hawke dreams she’s in Dairsmuid, searching for Fenris in empty streets.

* * *

Time slows to a crawl in the hold. Nothing to mark the passage of time, except the ship’s bell and the sliver of light that filters through whenever the hatch is opened: sun-bright once, but otherwise a shade of gray or another, impossible to place as dawn or dusk.

Hawke didn’t dare utter another word till the end of Mekas’s watch. The woman who relieved him isn’t the chatty type either, it turns out, and her throwing knife is now sticking out crosswise from the old, splintered wood of the pillar right above Hawke’s head.

The hold is quiet, rocked by the hushed roar of the sea. Hawke keeps imagining what she’d do if her guard happened to doze off. She’d scoot halfway around the pillar, push herself up to her feet, and pull the little knife free. Then she’d beg to use the seat of ease, and when the raider unshackled her, she’d sink the blade into—that part changes depending on her whim—her neck, or her ribs, or her stomach. More a fantasy than a plan, really, but at least it takes her mind off Fenris and the thin membrane of tarred wood that separates her from the boundless waters of the Bay.

In her mind, Hawke’s made it on deck, and she’s about to stab the knife between Rosalba’s shoulder blades when the ship’s bell rings again, faint through the waves.

A new guard, then, and more magebane. The taste of meat gone bad never even gets to leave her mouth, and her stomach twists at the thought. She drops her head back against the pillar and shuts her eyes, not even caring to see who’s come to guard her next. The hatch slides open; footsteps come down the ladder, and there’s some rustling and a few words being exchanged. “Leave us,” the newcomer says.

“Aye, cap’n,” comes the answer, and Hawke opens her eyes to see Kasra at the bottom of the companionway.

The guard slides the hatch shut behind herself while Kasra seats herself atop one of the crates. For a moment, she and Hawke simply consider each other. Hawke’s never seen a Qunari woman before: the Arishok’s troops and the occasional Tal-Vashoth she’s run into since Kirkwall have all been men, but if Kasra’s anything to go by, the women are no less impressive. Even seated, she remains imposing, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, the tines of her horns curling towards the ceiling sharper than arrowheads. Her hair is loose now, white strands parting around the base of her horns to cascade down bare arms crisscrossed with scars. Her eyes are black in the glow of the oil lamp save for that yellow ring around her pupils, and her horns throw long, wild shadows on the bulkhead behind her.

She’s beautiful, in a hard, rough-edged kind of way, but all Hawke can see is the woman who took her from Fenris and left him for dead on that moonlit shore.

Kasra heaves a sigh that could rival the rolling waves of the Amaranthine. “You’re a real pain in the arse, Champion, you know that?”

Hawke tries for a smile, but her face is stiff, and she doubts she manages much more than a twist of her lips. “I get that a lot,” she replies, keeping her voice light even though she feels anything but.

“I underestimated your man and barely lived to regret it, so I’ve a feeling I shouldn’t underestimate you either.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Hawke answers in a tone of feigned innocence.

An almost imperceptible flick of one pale eyebrow. Underneath, Kasra’s eyes are opaque. “I’ll wager all that prattle about your friend Varric wasn’t just you making conversation with Mekas. If you have something to say, get to it.”

Hawke takes a deep breath that reeks of bile and brine. One chance is all she gets; she better not blow it. “You let me heal Fenris,” she starts, her breath hitching in her throat. She steels her mind for the flood of memories pouring forth at the sound of his name, but some slip through: the stench of fire and ash, the crack of the morning star striking true, the bone under her fingertips—

Kasra snorts. “After you slaughtered more than half my crew between the two of you? If that’s what it took for you to surrender, then sure.”

The words are blithe, but Hawke recognizes the open grief in Kasra’s voice as the mirror of her own. “My point exactly,” she replies. “You’re not an unreasonable woman. That didn’t go the way you’d planned.” Kasra’s mouth thins to a line at that, but she doesn’t say anything. Hawke continues. “None of you even seem happy to have captured me. Rosalba used you and your crew to get her revenge, damn the people you’d lose. Am I wrong?”

Again: that tension at the mere mention of the seer’s name. A muscle flinches in Kasra’s jaw, magnified in the slanted light of the oil lamp. “She made it sound _easy_ ,” she answers after a moment, making it sound like a defeat. “Draw you out of hiding with that spell, pluck you up and steal you away before anyone even noticed you were gone. She threatened to go to another crew if we didn’t commit.” A bitter, mirthless smile stretches her mouth, and she shakes her head with a short jerk. “I’m not sure I even believed her till you showed up on that beach.”

The magebane was a good call, after all. Something rises inside her—a scream, a shout, a sob, _something_ , and if she could reach behind the Veil, Hawke knows it’d come out as a spell instead, a burst of magic unleashed without control. _Why?_ she wants to ask, but she knows no answer could make it easier to bear. Nothing is worth all that carnage. All the coin on this Maker-forsaken earth isn’t worth the flecks of gold in Fenris’s eyes.

And Kasra _knows_. Looking at her now, she looks old, the cheeks sunken rather than chiseled, the shadows under her eyes dark and deep. Now she looks every bit like the pirate ship captain who sent half her men to their deaths for pockets of coin. Rosalba isn’t one of them. She led the whole crew to the slaughterhouse without a care, as long as that got Hawke in with the rest of them.

It’s all too easy to take advantage of such a flimsy association, turn the cracks into faults. All Hawke has to do is the opposite of what she’s always done: whenever cracks spidered between her friends, she’d grout them with some quip or jest, then sand them down with a smile. Now, she only has to stick her fingers into the brittle mortar to feel the whole wall begging to come down.

Hawke wants to feel sorry; she wants to feel guilty. Rosalba was _made_ : she may have been kind once, but kindness, the unnamed casualty of this war, stands no chance against plate and steel and lyrium. Hawke’s seen it happen a hundred, a thousand times before, and now that it’s her turn, she can’t muster any kindness of her own.

She wants Rosalba dead, rotting in the same lonesome corner of the Void as her mother’s killer and Danarius and Knight-Commander Meredith.

Hawke meets Kasra’s gaze dead on. “I know the Chantry,” she answers in a low voice, choosing her words with care. “I know what they’re capable of in the name of Andraste. I’ve seen it all: incensing the Qunari, torturing innocents, threatening a bloody Exalted March rather than admit the Templars were going too far and take the Knight-Commander down a peg. They’ve hounded me for _years_ , all for the crime of standing up to them. And you think they’ll debase themselves by bargaining with pirates? You think they’ll _reward_ you?”

“I’d wager the Chantry is willing to pay more than you believe for the woman who threw Thedas into chaos,” Kasra answers, but there’s no conviction to it.

A bitter laugh shakes itself loose. “They’ll thank you for fulfilling your duty to the Maker, and if you’re not satisfied with that, then they’ll sooner start a war with the Felicisima Armada than give in. _That’s_ who you’re about to deal with.”

Silence falls over the hold again. The hull whines with each sway of the sea, while up the companionway a sailor calls out to another, voices trickling muffled through the closed hatch. Hawke forces herself not to look away, her heart pounding so hard she can taste each beat at the back of her throat. Kasra stares back, so still she seems frozen, a hole in time with her shape.

“I’m listening,” she says at last.

Hawke only realizes she’d been holding her breath when the veil dimming her vision is pulled off her eyes. “I’m the scion of House Amell,” she starts, the words sharp as glass in her mouth. “I know the richest families of the Free Marches, I have friends in the Merchants’ Guild, the Magisterium and the Armada, I’m on a first-name basis with the Prince of Starkhaven and the provisional viscount of Kirkwall, I can send a letter to the Queen of Ferelden and get a reply written in her hand. You want coin? The fastest ship on the Amaranthine? You want to be above the law of men? I can get all that for you and more,” she continues, and her blood is pounding so hard against her eardrums she can barely hear her own voice, “but in exchange, I walk free.”

_And Rosalba goes down_. No need to name her price: the words hang unspoken between them, louder than if Hawke had shouted them. Her pulse and the sea call out to each other over and over again, so that a toneless whoosh drones in her ears.

The seconds stretch, endless, till Kasra bares her teeth in an unreadable grin. “I’m impressed,” she answers, still with that enigmatic smile on her lips. It smoulders in the glow of the oil lamp. “You’d make a good raider.”

It takes Hawke all her strength to muster the same sweet smile she’d use to goad the twins into some mischief then convince her mother to forgive it. “They don’t call me Champion for nothing,” she answers.

That earns her a chuckle. Then Kasra rises to her feet without another word, and a slant of dull grayish light spills into the hold as her horned silhouette makes its way up the companionway. A shuddering sigh goes out of Hawke, and she starts trembling so hard her shackles rattle together behind her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and as always, I love hearing from you! I was pretty excited to show a different side of Amabel in this chapter, so I hope this was an enjoyable read. :D Kudos and comments welcome and appreciated, and feel free to come say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com) as well! <3
> 
> I also thought I’d share this AMAZING playlist the lovely [theherocomplex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex) put together for [Isabela](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1GGkmSLjQ9LT1kbp6qSiGQ). <3<3<3 It’s been on heavy rotation these past few weeks, so give it a try if you like sea shanties and pirate music (and check out theherocomplex’s Fenris/Hawke fics if you haven’t already because they’re out of this world!)


	8. Fenris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Entrusted to the Qunari after suffering major injuries at the hands of Kasra’s crew, Fenris finally comes to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I reversed the order of chapters 8 and 9 as of March 16. Sorry about any confusion, and thank you for your patience! <3 I decided to submit a short story to the Silk and Steel anthology project, so that kept me busy for a little while. They’ve apparently received more than five hundred submissions so I’m not holding my breath, but whatever happens, I’m happy I did it!
> 
> Content warnings for unreality and non-graphic character injury.

Someone screams.

Someone screams, and something tears, and the world explodes in a thousand, thousand fragments. Nothing to hold on to; Fenris falls, but there’s no ground, nothing to stand on or brace against, nothing but pain so absolute his body might just break apart around it. Salt, he thinks, without knowing why. There’s sand in his mouth and fiery strands curling around the inside of his skull, and things groan and grind as they shift under the pressure.

He’d scream, if he could remember how.

The sea roars, everywhere at once. Fenris smells iron, and the rose oil Hawke dabs behind her ears in the evening. _Hawke_ , he tries to say, but his tongue is a thick, useless slab in his mouth. He wants to reach for the moonlit blur above him but he’s never had hands. _Hawke, don’t leave me. Please_.

But she’s gone already, or perhaps he is, gone some place so far away it bears no name. The fire in his head burns bright, even with his eyes closed, then dims to nothing.

* * *

Fenris wakes to the lurch and sway of a ship. Not a sound but the sea, coaxing its usual creaks and groans from the old tarred wood of the hull. His mind floats, scattered about like flecks of dust. He tries to call it back to himself, wills the vague shifting shapes of his awareness to coalesce into his waking mind. He waits for his muzzy senses to resolve into the comforting weight of Hawke’s body curled up against him, but finds nothing.

If he can just find her, he decides, everything else will fall back into place.

He could conjure her from memory alone, down to the minutest detail. He gropes for the drifting pieces of her and tries to hold them into place: the dark feathery arch of an eyebrow, the full curve of a cheek, wine-stained lips and long lashes and that playful glint in eyes the shade of lyrium. He can’t get her quite right; once gathered in his mind, rose oil and silken hair and his name spoken in a laugh, her absence by his side is all the more stark. He releases her. She breaks apart above him, gossamer skin rippling to a fade and hair fanning out in evanescent streaks, two sparks of cobalt blinking like fireflies.

Alone, well and truly so. Around him, the empty hammocks of the crew quarters sway in the pale, milky light. Fenris fights to keep his eyes open and forces himself to move. At least he thinks he’s moving; perhaps his mind alone is drifting, weightless, floating up the ladder of the companionway and above deck. The sails are empty overhead, the ship becalmed. He can’t see the water through the billows of fog rolling on the surface, and the air is heavy with the scent of salt and rot and a sharp coppery tang he can’t place.

No crew in sight. No one above deck, in fact, no one but him and—

Hawke, standing on the forecastle deck.

She’s no more than a darker smudge far forward, but he would know her anywhere, the dark fall of her hair, her narrow shoulders, the taper of her waist. The relief is such it leaves him giddy, almost lightheaded. No battle, then. No blood magic, no knife game, no raiders come to take her away from him. He calls out to her, but she does not move, does not turn around. Her hair lifts and twists in a wind he can’t feel. _Hawke_ , he tries again, but his voice must still be too weak, or perhaps that strange wind carries it away from her. Each roll of the sea nearly sends him to his knees as he starts making his way to her. The planks only seem to stretch under his feet, and Hawke gets farther and farther away with every step he takes in her direction.

A shadow blots out the light. He looks up to see the whitish, steaming surface of the sea rising, rising through the fog with a hushed roar; then it folds onto itself and swallows the bowsprit, swallows the forecastle and Hawke with it, then falls upon him in quiet torrents.

Fenris starts awake. Pain again, merciless, and someone’s hands on him. He tries to shove them away, but his body refuses to move. Blots of colour dance above him, then become a face. Red hair, and elf ears. Their lips are moving, but all Fenris hears is the muted roar of the sea. He remembers the taste of mandarins.

“You remind me of someone,” he says, then loses consciousness again.

* * *

_What would you have done? Leave him there to die?_

A voice emerges from the soundless depths. Silvery, with a tense, reedy note, a swirl of colour that dims then brightens again with each word. Fenris tries to close his eyes against the unwelcome light, but they’re already closed.

Another voice, deep and gravelly this time. _What do you think they would have done, had it been one of us?_ comes the answer, a moment, an age later. _Good riddance, they would say. One less heathen_.

_It’s not right._ Youthful, tight with anger. Fenris tries to follow it this time, but the silence settles back around him, impenetrable. _We’ll always be heathens to them_ _if we keep thinking like this._

_Take it up to the Tamassrans. I am just the navigator_.

No way to know where the voices are coming from: the world unmakes and remakes itself around them, and when at last Fenris traces the pale smear again and follows it out of the dark, he finds himself looking at a woman’s face instead.

“Hawke,” he says, the name too large for his parched throat, too cumbersome for his numb lips, but as soon as he says it he knows it’s wrong. He would know Hawke from the curve of her heel or the crown of her head, and this woman is not her: she has a thickset, compact build, reddish streaks in her hair and a ruddy face as long as it is wide. Besides being human, the two look nothing like each other. That he could ever think it was Hawke, even for a split second, would be laughable were it not for the pain.

“You took a bad blow to the head,” she says, not unkindly, and Fenris has to make an effort to retain the words before they slip past him, forgotten. “My name is Nami. We found you.”

She busies herself with a small bowl and a whisk as she talks to him. She speaks of an attack, of a battle breaking out somewhere, of how lucky he is to have been found. Something about a fever breaking. Fenris cannot figure out what any of these things have to do with each other. The sound of the whisk scratching at the wooden bowl irritates him, but he lacks the strength to ask her to stop. He stops listening.

The edges of his awareness blur again, till Nami props him up with one arm and stacks a fresh pillow under him. Fenris sags back against it, his new half-sitting position enough to make the room spin before his eyes. He shuts them, though not before catching a glimpse of his own body lying on a simple straw mat on the floor, naked save for a thin sheet of linen, poultices and some sort of colourful paste applied to his wounds in large swirls. Apparently his sorry state does not preclude embarrassment: he burns with it, not so much due to his nudity as to the markings, bared for all to see. If the woman was ever shocked or intrigued by the sight, however, she must have long since sated her curiosity.

“I need you to drink this,” Nami says.

The pungent reek of crushed elfroot and spindleweed hits his nose. Fenris lifts one eyelid to see a thick, green liquid frothing in a halved coconut shell. “Not thirsty,” he tries, but the croak of his voice says otherwise, and it only earns him an amused chuckle. He sighs, resigned.

Nami tilts the bowl to his mouth. The rim of the coconut shell is painful against his chapped lips, and the tang of blood mingles with the sharp, bitter taste of the herbs. He sputters; the mixture is so thick for a second he thinks he’s going to choke on it, but he swallows, his throat aflame. Nami waits, patient, till he’s ready to drink again. She’s older than he thought at first, now that he can see her face up close: thin lines fan out from the corners of her eyes and frame her mouth, and her cheeks have started going from full to sagging.

The second sip is easier, and the third easier yet. His mouth and tongue are strangely uncoordinated, but he manages to drain the bowl after another coughing fit or two.

At last Fenris drops back against the pillows, exhausted, the medicinal taste of herbs coating his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He thought he knew shame, but it is nothing compared to having a stranger help him drink and wipe his chin like he was a toddler.

He sets the feeling aside, stinging though it is. “Where is Hawke?” he asks, fighting to keep his eyes open.

He only has time to see the smile sliding off the woman’s face before his eyelids fall close again. He hears the merry cracks and pops of a fire somewhere, the rolling sighs of the sea, feels for the first time the sway of the room around him. If there’s an answer, Fenris never hears it.

* * *

The voices return at night, the room swaying to their cadence. _You say she saved his life_ , says the first, deep as a well, _but that is no life worthy of the name._

_That’s not our decision to make_ , answers the second. That youthful silver again, tense with worry _. Don’t say it. You think I screwed up._

_I have not said anything._

_You think it loud enough._ Fenris tries to sharpen his awareness, rouse himself enough to focus on the source of the voices, but the lingering mists of sleep rest on him heavy as lead, and he cannot shake them off. He opens his mouth and tastes the sea, but cannot get his lips to form words. _You heard the raider_. _If she comes and doesn’t find him, she’ll kill me_.

A chuckle, rumbling deep. _Let her try, Vat. Let her try_.

Fenris has heard that name before, but cannot recall where. Nothing but dark silence surrounds him on all sides; by the time his sleeping mind returns to his sleeping body and together they become conscious again, the voices are long gone.

He wakes alone in a round hut of some sort, a fire burning low at its center. An iron-cast kettle is hooked over the flames, pale plumes of smoke rising through the hole at the top. Through it he sees nothing but green, the bright shining emerald of sunlight through tree leaves. Birds are chirping and twittering somewhere outside. A pharmacopeia of bottles and vials lines a nearby shelf; sheaves of herbs and flowers have been hung to dry from the lattice of wood supporting the conical roof, spinning slowly at the end of their ties. Flaps of deerskin cover the windows, and the only light is that brilliant green, pouring from the top hole of the hut.

The pain is—everywhere, a generalized discomfort compounded by a heat so heavy he expects to find himself covered in a duvet, but there’s only that same thin sheet of linen draped over him like an afterthought. More of that awful medicine and a bowl of broth await by his bedside; nothing could be less appealing right now, but Fenris knows his body needs both. He sits up with difficulty, sending the room swimming before him like a mirage. Then he forces himself to drain both the medicine and broth, grimacing at the herbal pungency of the first, then at the pronounced fish taste of the second.

That done, he resists the beckoning call of the straw mat and pillows; instead he peels the poultices off his body, revealing an array of cuts and puncture wounds. They’re nowhere near healed yet, though they’ve been tended to and kept clean. He can see the careful incisions where arrowheads were cut out of him, and can only be grateful he was not around for that part. A sutured cut on his flank whines in protest as he moves, and the swirls of dried paste applied to his skin crack and peel, flakes dusting onto the sheets.

Fenris pushes himself up, then takes a careful step. His legs buckle under his weight—an arrow went clean through his left thigh, he notices—but still carry him to the nearby basin. The fish broth did little to stave off the lightheadedness, and the effort leaves him exhausted. For a moment all he can do is cling to the lip of the table and stand there, trying to will away the gray spots flowering at the edge of his vision. He’s going to need solid food, and soon.

He manages not to pass out. His vision clears, and Fenris takes in his own reflection on the surface of the basin. His hair hangs over his brow in limp strands, his lips are chapped bloody, and dark shadows gouge the skin under his eyes. Well, at least he’s alive. Enough to get him back to Hawke.

Something twists in his chest, but he cannot afford to give in to anguish. The pale, sickly man on the surface breaks into shards when Fenris dips a rag into the tepid water to wash the fever sweat, dried paste, and blood off his body. It’s a long, arduous undertaking; every inch of him is sore, to say nothing of the wounds, but the cleanliness shaves one thin layer off his misery. He locates a roll of clean cotton and bandages his wounds, then finds his tunic and leggings, cleaned and mended. Once dressed, he starts looking around for his armour and greatsword.

Someone clears their throat in the doorway. “I didn’t think I’d have to specify you’re on bed rest considering the state you’re in, but apparently that was an oversight on my part.”

Nami, the outside light haloing her head, one arm holding up the flap of skin that serves as a door. Fenris straightens himself up, trying not to look like he might collapse any second. The unimpressed arch of her eyebrow tells him exactly what she thinks of that. “I have to leave now.”

She snorts. “No.”

“Am I your prisoner?”

The mirth in her laugh is genuine. “Nothing quite so dramatic. Merely my patient.”

“Then let me pass.”

“I said no.” Nami lets the skin flap close behind her and walks towards him, fists balled on her hips. Her black hair blazes with a reddish tint when she steps into the shaft of light pouring from the top hole. “I’ve put too much time and effort into sewing you back together for you to just undo my hard work, so you’re going to lie back down and rest,” she says, jabbing a finger towards the straw mat.

He takes a step forward with all the aplomb he can muster in his state. “I appreciate all you’ve done, but I must get back to Hawke.”

Her mouth thins at that. “No,” she says again.

“Get out of my—”

Nami rolls her eyes, and before Fenris even knows it, she gives him a light shove, one palm pressed flat to his chest. He doesn’t feel it: if he hadn’t seen her hand connect with his breastbone he would’ve thought it went right through him. The floor drops away under his feet, and for a moment he’s dislocated, hovering somewhere in midair. The hut rocks from side to side like the rolling deck of a ship, and the sharp tang of the sea billows into the room, carrying with it the chantlike reverence of a prayer and the creaks and groans of old timber.

He finds himself seated on the thin straw mat, blinking up at Nami. It’s not hate, he feels, nothing as base and passionate as that. No matter how well-intentioned, though, she’s standing between him and Hawke, and that cannot be allowed. Even in his state, even without his blade he can subdue her easily, get past her even more so. He focuses on a point behind her, and calls upon the lyrium of his markings. Half a heartbeat, no more.

She’s still faster. Her balled hand opens, and the room fills with a fog so thick he sees nothing but the glow of his markings, flickering around him in iridescent streaks. A hushed whooshing noise smothers the birdsong. When Nami speaks again, he cannot tell at all where her voice is coming from. “Will you behave yourself now?” she asks from everywhere at once.

Fenris clenches his jaw against the molten surge of anger rising through him. No point: he cannot fight like this, so he forces himself to let the lyrium go dormant again, leaving nothing but pearlescent gray all around him. “What do you want?”

“You don’t have to do this,” she says, somewhere close to his ear and faraway all at once. “You don’t have to _fight_ anymore. You can stay here and rest.”

“How many times do I have to tell you I have to find Hawke?” he says through clenched teeth.

“And I’m telling you you don’t have to. You’d been left for dead when we found you, and good thing we did. If your wounds hadn’t killed you first, then the rising tide would have. And you would return to her after that?”

“I was protecting her,” Fenris spits back. From what? Somehow, he cannot remember. His wounds must be catching up to him; images flit into his mind, colliding. He thinks of a fight breaking out on a beach somewhere, of a ship weighing anchor and sailing away. “I would do it again,” he says, because at least he knows that much.

“You would, but is it what you want? What do _you_ want, Fenris? Aren’t you tired of always fighting someone else’s battles?”

_Yes_ , he wants to answer. He was made—literally, in his case—to fight, to defend, to _protect_ , but every time he lays down his sword it becomes harder and harder to raise it again. He longs to stop, longs to lie down and rest. Even the fog feels like a physical weight resting on his shoulders now, and Fenris allows his eyes to slide close, though the visibility isn’t any less worse for it: all he sees is a pale grayish white when they’re open, and dark streaks of colour when they’re closed. “I am a warrior,” he answers, and the word itself has the weight of a stone passing his lips. “Fighting is what I do. It may as well be for the one I choose.”

“Would you rather not be fighting at all? Would you rather not lay down your arms?”

Of course. Of _course_ he’d rather not fight, but has the choice ever been his? The fog wraps itself around him, thick as cream. He could curl up into it and float, held aloft by the strands of mist around him. He allows himself to relax, and the tension bleeds out of him. “Why do you keep asking this?” he hears himself drawl, like he was drunk.

“Because you’re _safe_ here, and free from the burden that was laid upon your shoulders.” The voice comes at once from every misty droplet hanging in the air around him, cradling him like saltwater. He cannot remember what Nami sounded like, moments ago. He cannot even remember her face. Nor Hawke’s, for that matter, and the realization is not as startling as he expects. “No one will come for you here. No one will find you here, and even if she does, she will not get near you.”

When Fenris lifts his eyelids again, he is lying back on the straw mat, Nami’s blurred shape above him. A dream, then, nothing more. “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she whispers. She swirls a brush into a paste of some kind before dabbing it on his brow and cheekbones, then running it down his chest and stomach. “You need to rest.”

The paste dries and cracks on his skin, releasing a pleasant warmth that turns the muscles underneath to water. Fenris closes his eyes again, lets the gentle sway of the room lull him to sleep. He hears the sea somewhere at the edge of his hearing, replete with whispers and voices and the sweet high song of the wind. _Suffering is a choice_ , it says. _Existence is a choice, and we can refuse it_.

Fenris fights sleep off a moment longer. The room goes still around him, like it was holding its breath. “Who else was in the room?”

The brush hovers on his shoulder, then glides down the hollow of his collarbone. “No one.”

“I heard—voices,” he says, trying to remember what they were saying. “Qunari, I believe,” he continues, but a sense of wrongness permeates the word. It was their spears and arrowheads that dealt him his wounds. He _fought_ the Qunari, trying to protect—

Try as he might the truth eludes him. The memories are somewhere just out of reach, and he’s too tired to chase them down the dark corners of his mind.

Nami smooths down the linen sheet over him like she was tucking in a small child. “Just a dream, Fenris,” she says, her voice slippery as silk. “Just a dream.”

Fenris accepts this, and surrenders to the oncoming sleep. _Asit tal-eb_ , the dream says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments welcome and appreciated! Thank you so much for reading, and as always, I would love to hear your thoughts! <3


	9. Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke spoke with Kasra and desperately tried to turn the tide to avoid whatever fate awaits her at the hands of the Seekers of Truth. Now Kasra returns, having made her decision, but nothing is ever easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I reversed the order of chapters 8 and 9 as of March 16. Sorry about any confusion!
> 
> Content warnings for graphic violence and body horror.

Hawke starts awake, someone’s hand clasped over her face and the stench of magebane filling her nostrils. Her mind leaps for her magic, but it’s hard and still as ice, a dead weight where it should pool airy and gold. At least she manages not to retch.

Mekas pulls himself up, rag in hand. Kasra sends him away with a tilt of her horns towards the companionway, then perches on the usual crate. Hawke waits for her to speak first, but for one endless moment there’s no sound but Mekas’s footsteps up the ladder and the maddening litany of creaks and rattles of the _Fury_ , the squeaks and little pattering feet of rats darting to and fro somewhere under the planks.

The wait is so excruciating Hawke fears she’s going to be sick after all, and not because of the seasickness. “I dare hope you didn’t wake me up like that just to bring me bad news,” she says once the latch has slid shut behind Mekas.

Kasra cocks an eyebrow. “As much as I like watching you squirm, I suppose there’s no point. I’ve put your suggestion to a vote. If it will rid us of Rosalba, then you’ve got yourself a deal.”

No hint of a lie or trap on the captain’s face. A thin light strand of hope stretches inside Hawke, fresh and sweet as springwater. A way out. An escape—surely someone out there is willing to give the crew of the _Fury_ what they want, even if it costs Hawke every last copper to her name to pay them back. And if not, then at least she’s bought herself some time. Each minute that separates her from the Seekers of Truth is worth handfuls of gold: her captors will let their guard down at some point, and she’ll slink between their fingers, free to find her way back to Fenris and Isabela.

Heat rushes to her cheeks at the thought of seeing them again, and she has to blink the prickle out of her eyes. “Thank you,” Hawke answers, fighting to keep her tears dammed. Maker help her, after everything she should not feel _grateful_ , but she could kiss Kasra right about now.

Kasra props one ankle on the opposite knee and steeples her fingers in front of her. “Here are my conditions. You will write to your friends and contacts, and you will remain aboard till we’ve secured the coin. The magebane is not negotiable, but if you cooperate, I’m willing to give you more comfortable accommodations.” Hawke’s heart sinks at the idea of days, maybe weeks, of magebane and sickness, but she nods in answer. Only a fool would let her get her magic back. “I will instruct you as to the contents of the letters. If you try anything funny, if you attempt to slip any other instructions to your contacts or if they fail to follow instructions and attack us instead, then we’re taking our chances with the Seekers instead. Understood?”

“Yes,” Hawke manages in answer.

Those strange, unsettling eyes consider her for a moment. “And if the deal goes through and we release you,” Kasra continues, “then you and your associates don’t go after us. _Ever_. We go our separate ways and pretend this never happened.”

_Impossible_ , Hawke wants to say. The terms are generous, all things considered: no amount of coin will bring back the people Kasra’s lost on that beach, but she’s the one who dug their graves by coming after Hawke. How can she ever pretend this—this _mess_ never happened? That Fenris never fell in battle to save her from this, that she never felt his very lifeblood running under her fingers, that she was never taken away from him when he needs her most?

But she must, if she is to see him again. This time the tears drop from her lashes, small spots flowering on the bloodstained muslin of her shift.

Kasra leans forward, and the silhouette of her horns turns diffuse against the bulkhead behind her. “Am I making myself clear?” she asks in a low voice, furrows creasing her brow over intent eyes.

Hawke manages a small, drooping nod. “Yes,” she says through the thin, painful reed of her throat. The giddy rush of relief has already spent itself, leaving behind nothing but exhaustion, veined with the dark streaks of dread. “And Rosalba?”

A lopsided smile curls Kasra’s mouth. “One thing at a time, Champion. One thing at a time.”

* * *

Blisters weep around her wrists when the shackles are removed, and her limbs are so sore and stiff it takes Hawke a few tries to haul herself to her feet. A bucket of seawater is drawn for her to clean up: a far cry from the indulgent baths she got Fenris to enjoy too, hours-long affairs sudsy with fragrant soap and kept steaming with magic, but her hands are still caked with dirt and dried blood, and Hawke isn’t about to complain.

Still. This blood is all she has left of Fenris, and part of her is loath to part from it. She has no choice but to scrub her skin clean under Mekas’s glare, though, and watch the dark flecks of blood rise to the surface and trail red swirls in their wake.

That done, she’s taken above deck and led astern towards the captain’s cabin. The planks are rough under the soles of her bare feet, and a surprisingly brisk wind blows, teasing pale high crests from the waves. Hawke is shivering like the sails overhead within a few paces, and she hugs herself, head tucked between her shoulders. It feels like a lifetime or two have crumbled away since she was sitting on the quarterdeck stairs of the _Pearl Oyster_ , ensconced into the warm folds of Fenris’s cloak while Isabela read the lines of his hand. A dream, maybe, burning away in the pure flame of dawn, or someone else’s memory, shared so long ago she’s come to mistake it as her own.

Were it not for Kasra’s grip on her arm, she could run to the gunwale and jump. Something halfway between dread and exhilaration quickens her heartbeat at the thought, but if not the water itself then something lurking beneath the surface would likely get her, and she refuses to give up till she’s taken Fenris’s cold, still hand in hers, and felt for herself the lack of pulse in his throat.

And besides …

The sight of the captain’s cabin cuts that thought short. It’s spacious, all in mullioned windows and rich embroidered tapestries; the polished surface of a desk gleams under the gentle sway of a chandelier, fluted legs nailed to the planks, while a weapon stand holds everything from maces to swords, warm light trickling down fullers and edges. There’s a device Hawke only recognizes as an astrarium thanks to Fenris, and a row of bleached skulls is staring at her from a well-garnished bookshelf.

But most arresting of all is the honest-to-the-Maker dragon mounted next to the four-poster bed. Stiff, leathery wings are tipped high towards the ceiling, and its head is reared back as though it were about to breathe flame. It surveys her entrance with its glass eyes, and she feels a pang of pity for the creature, reduced to a conversation piece in a pirate’s cabin.

Hawke isn’t sure what she expected, but it certainly wasn’t this.

She’s made to sit at the desk, strewn with maps and compasses. Kasra pours her a knuckle of red wine and has strips of salted meat and a small loaf of sourdough brought to her. Hawke knows she should be famished after a day or two of hardtack, but she wets her lips with the wine and nibbles till her stomach churns in protest.

She pushes the food away, and instead she’s brought an inkwell, a quill, and parchment. Her fingers are awkward around the quill, her hand still cramped and stiff from being shackled for so long, and her spine strains to bend over the first sheet of parchment.

“Start with your dwarf,” Kasra commands, and Hawke starts writing.

_Dear Varric_ , she writes, like this was just one of the hundreds of letters she’s sent him over the years. _I hope this letter finds you well, or at least better than it leaves me, as I find myself in the queerest of predicaments._

Her awareness shrinks to the page before her, the rough scratch of the quill on the parchment, the gleam of wet ink. Hawke ignores the painful clench of her fingers and the soreness creeping up her arm; instead she concentrates on the shape of the next word, the next letter. The movements of her hand are the mere conduit between the captain’s voice and the paper as Kasra dictates, just as light turns into time through the style of a sundial.

Her trance is interrupted when Kasra taps one finger on the parchment. “Start this one over,” she says.

Hawke has to blink a few times before the blurred streaks become words again. The usually bold lines and loops of her hand are so shaky and sloppy as to be unreadable, and her sentences list across the page at an almost comical slant. Kasra crumples the sheet into a ball, and smoothes a fresh one down in front of Hawke.

She doesn’t allow the sigh to pass her lips. This is her reward, and she accepts it without complaint.

In the end, there are so many letters she loses track of them. One is addressed to Varric, of course, one to her uncle Gamlen, one to Aveline, one to Sebastian in Starkhaven, to Seneschal Bran and Queen Anora and Lady Elegant, and to numerous nobles scattered around Kirkwall and the rest of the Free Marches, including a fair few who’d sooner frame her letter and install it on the mantelpiece rather than come to her aid. As long as it buys her time, though, that hardly matters.

By the time she’s done, Hawke’s arm aches from fingertips to shoulder blade. Her head is heavy as lead, but she somehow resists the urge to drop it on the table while Kasra reads the last letter over, yellow eyes running down the still-drying ink.

Then she nods, satisfied. “You did well, Champion,” she says, setting a sailor’s clasp knife in front of Hawke. “You’ve earned your reward.”

The light of the chandelier dances on the edge of the knife; the point is aimed towards the deck, where somewhere Rosalba waits, her broken hands curled against her chest.

* * *

It’s somehow still night when Hawke steps back on deck again, trying to match her step to the sway of the hull. It ought to be past midday after all that time spent in Kasra’s cabin, but the sky is a soft, silky shade of black around a bright wedge of moon, and if it’s moved at all then Hawke can’t tell. The salt of the sea should be pleasant after the hold’s must of old rotten wood and her own unwashed reek, but it only makes the hot bitter surge rise higher in her throat.

The clasp knife weighs a ton in her hand.

Hawke’s killed before, and she’s even killed with the dagger she kept hidden in her boot, back in Kirkwall—one of the few possessions she hasn’t parted from since, a thin shard of silverite Korval smithed for her after a demon melted the trusty little blade that followed her across the Waking Sea. Fenris even showed her how to use it, where to stab a man to make him bleed out in seconds, but those had been close calls, when she’d had no choice but to reach for her blade instead of her magic, no choice but to trade her foe’s life for her own.

This, though? This is different. This feels _dirty_. Coward that she is, she hoped the pirates would handle Rosalba, but they gave her the magnanimous honour of exacting her own revenge instead.

Or maybe they’re just itching to watch two mages without magic fight it out.

Movement, under the mainmast: Rosalba struggling to break free from Magebane’s grip as he drags her astern, ignoring the kicks aimed at his shins. He must’ve gotten her while she slept: her hair is tumbling out of a headscarf, and her face is bare. Hawke can’t bring herself to feel sympathy for the woman, but looking inwards she finds no satisfaction either. This night has gone on too long, and she just wants it to end.

Rosalba’s eyes snap from Kasra to Hawke, then back again. “We had an agreement,” she hisses, the words more breath than voice. The lanterns throw cruel shadows on her face, thickening its every fold and lineament. “Turn her over to the Chantry.”

Kasra crosses her arms over her chest. “That was before our agreement”—her features twist like the word tasted foul—“cost me half my crew.”

The headscarf slips loose and snaps in a gust of wind before vanishing in the dark expanse of sea and sky. “I want her to suffer as I have suffered,” Rosalba says, nostrils flared, lips pulled back to bare her teeth. “I want her tortured and paraded for all to see, I want her name erased from history and forgotten, I want everything she holds dear burned to _ash_ before her eyes, and if you will not do it, then _I_ will.”

This time, Rosalba shakes Magebane loose. He makes for her again, but the incandescent blaze of her eyes sends him stumbling back. The rest of the raiders keep their distances, the lot of them standing in a circle around the seer, and Hawke finds herself moving back for every step Rosalba takes in her direction, an icy trickle of dread dripping down her spine.

A dry laugh rumbles behind her. “Can’t wait to see what you can do without magic,” Kasra taunts, but there’s a brittle note of uncertainty under the bluster.

Hawke almost drops the clasp knife when Kasra shoves her forward. Not that it’s going to be much help now: Rosalba is laughing, cold and cruel as a winter stream over sharp rocks, and magebane or not the air is stirring around her, gathering into a groundswell.

“What I can do? What _can’t_ I do?” she laughs, then settles those dark, scorching eyes on Hawke. “Your blood is part of me now, Champion. I could make you belly-dance if I cared to.”

The words curl in the air, dangerous as poison fumes. Hawke recoils. _What did you do?_ she wants to ask, but her voice freezes in her throat; squirming tendrils of magic prod the tender spots of her mind for a place to burrow, slither in merciless coils around her and squeeze. Her fingers tighten around the grip of the knife of their own accord, and she’s never wanted anything as much as she wants to stab that blade into Kasra’s stomach, then draw it across her own throat. It tastes like chokedamp, that urge, like chokedamp and peat and the sharp iron tang of her own blood on Rosalba’s tongue, and there’s something so revolting, so _violating_ there that bile burns the roof of her mouth as a scream rises in her throat.

_It’s mine_ , Hawke tries to shout while crisscrossing strands of crimson tighten all over her, lifting her knife hand through the air. _It’s_ my _blood, give it back, give it back, give it back_ —

Not a scream, no. A brief, bright flare rises from her belly to her heart to her mouth: nothing so much as a spell, just a spark that the magebane didn’t smother, but it’s enough. It shears through the strange weave of Rosalba’s magic, and Hawke breathes again, a gulping, glorious inhale of salt air and tar.

The clasp knife clatters to the plank at her feet, unblooded.

Even the raiders felt that ripple of magic through the air, thin though it is. Torchlight dances on daggers and cutlasses as they break out of their paralysis, but their movements unfold slowly, across ages.

Hawke doesn’t have time to wonder whether that was Rosalba’s doing or not: she’s staring Hawke down, her eyes like holes burned into her face. “ _ **You**_ ,” she says in someone— _something_ —else’s voice. It occurs to Hawke, too late, much too late, she should’ve wondered just _how_ Rosalba escaped the Templars who overran her hometown of Afsaana.

In the immortal words of Varric Tethras: _well, shit_.

The gaping hollow inside Rosalba opens wide, and torrents pour out of the Fade to fill it, slamming into her like churning waters off a cliff. Her body can’t withstand it: it brims over instantly, melting flesh, bloating limbs, twisting bones. Clumps of sable hair drop to the planks as skin fuses with cloth and rearranges itself over arms like wind-beaten trees, and a terrible sound that could be a laugh or a scream tears its way out of her throat, or what’s left of it, anyway.

Magebane lunges first. The oiled blade of his dagger flashes under the ship’s lanterns then slices through his own throat like butter, and there’s a look of faint confusion on his face as spurts of blood gurgle out of his neck. A single word on Kasra’s lips— _no_ —as he crumbles face first on the deck, crimson runnels flowing down the planks.

Hawke does not think. She whirls around and runs, and the last thing she sees before ducking behind the nearest mast is a lumbering figure with skin the colour of a bruise and eyes blazing within the suggestion of a face. Nothing left of Rosalba except her hate and those rings of polished wood on the creature’s gnarled claws.

Walls of flame burst out on either side of Hawke, close enough to singe the sleeves of her shift. The nearest raiders aren’t so lucky. They burn, the roar of the fire not quite drowning out their screams. A thud makes the planks thrum under her feet.

“She’s going to sink us,” Kasra is yelling, somewhere in the chaos. “Kill her! _Kill her!_ ”

No one’s listening, much less obeying. The only answer is dying screams and ropes lashing through the air, resounding cracks that Hawke hopes are timber and not bodies, and through it all, a voice like thunder, trembling in the night: “ _Come out, Champion, or I will **MAKE** you_.”

Hawke’s heart lurches when the whole damned _mast_ starts listing under her shoulder blades. She runs out of cover, vaults over shriveled, charred things, and scrambles up the quarterdeck stairs, tucking her face into the crook of her elbow as a burst of magic sends a hail of splinters down on her. No one’s at the helm: the ship’s wheel rattles and spins out of control, clockwise then withershins. The rigging and sails are tangling together overhead, while spars crack and snap.

A raider slams into the rail of the quarterdeck and collapses on the planks, then doesn’t get up again. Hawke doesn’t have a plan, beyond avoiding the gouts of fire and sprays of wooden chips. Kasra’s cabin is just across the quarterdeck; it’s a dead end, and she has no use for a stuffed dragon and a bunch of exotic curios, but she still finds herself running towards the illusory safety of the cabin door.

She’s halfway across the deck when someone grabs the collar of her shift and tugs hard. “Where the _fuck_ do you think you’re going?” Kasra shouts, inches away from her face. “Do something!”

Hawke laughs in her face, a shrill, nearly hysterical sound. “After all the magebane you’ve been giving me? Do _what_?!”

“Whatever the hell you did earlier,” she retorts, her breath mingling with the heat of the flames on Hawke’s face. “That _was_ magic, wasn’t it?”

Her yellow eyes are frantic as they search her face. That she has to ask tells Hawke one thing: Kasra’s self-control is slipping, sliding down to the Void with the rest of this mess. Magic, yes—a mote of it, a fleck that somehow broke free from the rest, and even _that_ shouldn’t have been possible. Her magic sleeps on, still as the waters beneath the frozen surface of a lake. Hawke shakes her head. “You’re asking me to cook a meal with a single grain of barley,” she shouts in answer.

An agonized scream rends the night; Kasra’s eyes widen as comprehension dawns on her. “ _Fuck_ ,” she says, releasing Hawke’s collar and sending her stumbling back.

To her credit, Kasra leaps down the quarterdeck stairs to fight with her crew, her morning star whipping through the air. From her vantage point, Hawke can see it all: fire skittering up the ratlines of the slanting mast and sparks whirling in the sea wind, the abomination’s clawed hands squeezing a sailor’s head like an egg, the crew hauling seawater to douse the flames even as they’re being ripped to shreds. Mekas is in the fray, using a grappling hook as a makeshift weapon. It’d be so easy to turn the tide, if Hawke had her magic: a barrier to protect the survivors and smother the fire, a force spell to contain the abomination and give the raiders a chance to close in on her, but bereft of the golden sheen of the arcane, she’s just a simple little human now, useless and fragile.

Not that her magic made her any less useless when it mattered.

Her lips part, sucking in a shuddering breath that tastes of ash. For a moment time bleeds into itself and she’s on that beach again, the air thick with smoke and saltwater, blood and broken bone under her fingertips, and she’s still trying to rub the sensation off when she hears— _birds_ , a flock on the wing trilling and wheeling as dawn breaks.

In the distance, the pale domes of a city blush in the first glow of morning, streamers of rose gold scattering on the stippled surface of the sea. Hawke turns her back on the dying men and walks towards the light, clinging to the shrouds to pull herself up on the ship’s rail. Her every instinct screams at her to move away from the edge; the sea seems so far below now, the water churning white against the hull and clawing at her with fingers of salt spray. Her knees nearly buckle under her weight, and she fears the merest gust of wind could blow her right off the rail, but it’s either the sea or the abomination howling for her blood.

Hawke takes a deep breath, then risks a glance over her shoulder. Mekas is at the top of the quarterdeck stairs, winding his grappling hook; she catches his stupefied gaze, and flicks him two fingers before jumping into the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by the lovely [Rory](https://sunshinemage.tumblr.com/), who did an AMAZING job recreating this scene from the chapter and was just an absolute pleasure to work with! <3 I think this is one of my top three Amabel moments, and they more than did it justice. :D
> 
> Oh, Rosalba. My understanding of the magebane is that it depletes a mage’s mana, but does not necessarily severs their connection to the Fade. I wrote Rosalba as possessed by Rage from the beginning, so even without her mana she was still able to use magic through the demon. I also headcanon that there are “degrees” of possession—the mage’s willpower, the entity’s nature, and the relative balance between the two are all factors that come into play, and it’s when a demon completely overwhelms a mage that we get the resulting physical transformation. (I’m not the most well-versed in all the intricacies of the lore, so I figured I’d explain my take on things in case it diverges from canon!).
> 
> Apologies in advance if the next chapter is a little late as well—I’m going to be pretty busy over the next week or so, but then hopefully things will calm down for a while (so much for hoping February would be quieter!). I am VERY excited about the direction the rest of the story will take, and I promise I have not forgotten about a certain elf. :D Thank you all so much for your patience, as always, and I hope you will keep enjoying this!
> 
> Kudos and comments welcome and appreciated, and feel free to come say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com) as well! <3


	10. Isabela

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabela boards the _Fury_ , mere moments after Hawke’s escape, and confronts Kasra Adaar.

“Bring us alongside!”

Sails luffing, the _Pearl Oyster_ comes abreast of the _Fury_ , and Isabela’s crew falls silent as the extent of the desolation comes into sight. Kasra Adaar’s four-masted barque is in a sorry state: the cracked mainmast hangs like a puppet from the warren of tangled lines overhead, threatening to collapse; the mizzen too slants dangerously, and the sails are twisted and stretched at odd angles, about as useful as laundry on a clothesline. The acrid smell of copper and smoke blows towards them, shearing through the sharp salt scent of the sea.

Isabela’s heart lurches. She hails the ship a few times, but there’s no sound except the nervous mutters of her own crew and the soft lapping of the waves trapped between the hulls. Grappling hooks fly at her command, catching onto the rail. Her men haul the barque closer and tether it to the _Oyster_ , and the gangplank is swung out over the gap to bridge the two ships.

“What in the Void happened?” one man asks. Another whispers a quick prayer to Andraste, as if the Bride of the Maker hadn’t obviously turned a blind eye to them.

“Are you lot pirates or Chantry sisters?” Isabela snaps over her shoulder. The men puff up like seagulls fighting over scraps of food, but Loquita throws her a knowing glance and rolls her eyes before leaping onto the gangplank. She crosses sure-footed as a dancer, her throwing knives glinting in the sunrise as she rolls her wrists, elf ears sticking out from a head of cropped dark hair.

Isabela follows suit, and the rest of the crew trickle after them, shamed into quiet. The _Fury_ looks even worse up close, if that’s even possible. Kasra’s lucky she managed to contain the fire at all: the pitch burned in the seams of the planks, releasing a noxious reek that slides down Isabela’s throat like a living thing. The topmast staysails and lower topsails of the main and mizzen have been cut loose—dropped into the sea, she guesses, lest they spread the fire to the rest of the ship. The few survivors are patching each other up; their dead crewmates haven’t been relinquished to the sea yet, and their bodies litter the deck, some torn limb from limb, others charred beyond recognition. Even accounting for the men Kasra lost to Hawke and Fenris, that’s still not a lot of hands to sail a ship like the _Fury_. The others must’ve ended up overboard, maybe choosing the sea themselves over whatever—or _whoever_ —nearly left the barque derelict.

Isabela has a hunch as to who that might be, of course.

“Welcome aboard, Your Majesty,” Kasra says with a mockery of a bow. “Had I known to expect the Queen of the Eastern Seas herself, I’d have gotten the deck swabbed first.”

The contempt in her words could set the pitch alight all over again. “Hardly the moment for jests, don’t you think?” Isabela retorts.

“Quite the opposite. No better time than after surviving an abomination.”

Isabela fights to keep her face stony, but the word sends her pulse running high and makes her palms sweat under the leather of her gloves. The disquiet runs through her crew like a wave, but she’s not going to give Kasra the satisfaction of watching her fret. She jerks her head in lieu of an order, and her men spread over the deck at once, weapons drawn. The surviving crew of the _Fury_ is outnumbered three to one, and none of them are in any state to try anything. Even Kasra’s in worse shape than she lets on: one of her arms is badly burned, the gray skin blistered and oozing, and though she holds herself up straight, it costs her a visible effort.

“Where’s Hawke?” Isabela asks, pleased with herself for keeping the edging panic out of her voice.

It earns her a choked laugh. “I think you know.”

“Bela—uh, Cap’n,” Pieron calls out. He nudges a corpse with the toe of his boot, a quick jerk that betrays his unease.

There’s the abomination, sprawled on the main deck. The only thing that marks it as having once been human is the colour of its blood, rills of it stretching between the planks in crimson fingers. Just a heap of melted, purplish flesh otherwise, rearranged over gnarled bones and hardened to something like horn. The face is cracked down the middle, like one of those Orlesian porcelain masks, and the clothes have fused to the skin, making it impossible to tell where fabric ends and flesh begins. Isabela stares down at it, trying to decide if this is what’s left of Hawke.

Nonsense. Kirkwall did its damnedest to send her over the edge and failed; it’d take more than this for her to crack. But Isabela remembers Fenris, lying in a patch of sand soaked through with his own blood on Llomerryn, and maybe, maybe that was just one fissure too many—

No, not Hawke. Smooth rings of dragonthorn squeeze the abomination’s misshapen knuckles, and a matted hank of sable hair shines dully in the morning light. What’s that seer from the market even doing here? No matter. Isabela’s too relieved to care much at the moment.

“ _Almost_ had me there.” She twirls a dagger between her fingers and ambles down the main deck like the _Fury_ had always been hers. The survivors are nervous: their eyes slink away as she walks past them, the moans and grunts of pain dying in their throats. “Now let me make myself clear, sweet thing”—to her satisfaction Kasra bristles at the pet name—“either I finish what Fenris started and bleed every last one of you dry, or you answer me. _Where_ ,” she continues, drawing nearer till the point of her blade presses under the oxwoman’s chin, “ _is Hawke?_ ”

Kasra stares her down with those strange black eyes of hers, chin held up high at the end of the dagger. Isabela barely clears her shoulders, but she has the upper hand, and they both know it. “Gone,” Kasra answers at last, visibly nettled by having to take orders from her. “Took her chance with the sea.”

Far in the distance, dawn peeks on the horizon behind Dairsmuid, blushing like all those self-proclaimed women of virtue Isabela has distracted from their noble husbands. The spires of the city are etched dark across its bloom, looking deceptively close to the untrained eye. Risky, but Isabela can’t fault Hawke for choosing the waters of the Bay over an abomination—to say nothing of Kasra Adaar.

Unless Kasra’s lying, of course. “Or maybe you have her below deck,” Isabela says, glancing back at her through her lashes.

“Search the ship if you like,” Kasra retorts, then deflates with a weary sigh. “Mind if I sit down?”

The bravado’s all gone. Not like she can do much, anyway, wounded and unarmed, so Isabela lowers her dagger. Kasra sits down hard on the charred planks of the deck, the relief evident on the slack lines of her face.

“Where were you taking her?” Isabela asks.

“Dairsmuid. Meant to ransom her to the Seekers,” she answers, then jerks her chin towards the dead abomination. “Her idea, but Hawke promised us more if we let her go. You can see how well that turned out.” She shakes her head, a wry smile curling her mouth. “Can’t believe I let her talk me into this.”

“She does that. Could charm a Chantry Sister out of her robes.”

“Yeah? That’d have been more fun.”

Isabela snorts, then turns to her crew. “Bind the survivors. Mal, Loquita, with me, and keep your eyes open.”

They make their way below deck and search the _Fury_ ’s every nook and cranny. Couldn’t just have Hawke in the brig, of course, so they pick their way astern, even searching the berth deck and galley and rummaging uselessly through the spare sails and rigging. In the hold they find casks of Antivan wine, bolts of silk and damask, and chests of perfume and spices—leftover haul that Kasra hasn’t gotten around to unloading and selling yet, no doubt. Isabela opens a tin of saffron and breathes in the fragrance, the dusty, delicate scent loosening some of the knots in her stomach. This, she hopes, will keep her crew content for a little while.

Still no sign of Hawke anywhere, though. Isabela’s last hope shatters when they find the captain’s cabin empty as the rest: she was so sure they’d find her there, a quip ready on her lips as soon as the gag came off, but no such luck. Her arms go slack at her sides, and her eyes prickle with useless heat.

“What in the Void is that?” Malik says, poking a stuffed dragon, of all things, with the pommel of his cutlass.

“Hunting trophy,” Loquita explains—the elf used to sail on the _Fury_ before Isabela got her hands on the _Oyster_ and advertised bigger shares to draw prospective crew members. “Biggest specimen that would fit on board. Her name’s Greta.”

Isabela leaves them to their prattle and examines her surroundings. Kasra’s quarters have been spared the destruction wreaked by the abomination. Were it not for the dragon glaring at them next to the four-poster bed, the cabin could’ve belonged to any other Antivan merchant prince, with its drapes of lustrous velvet and shelves sagging under thick volumes. There’s even a fancy Orlesian tapestry, probably titled _Wyvern Hunting Scene with Poncey Gits_ , and she wonders if Kasra has any appreciation for the weaving or if this is just another hunting trophy. The latter, if she had to guess: everyone on Llomerryn’s heard the rumours, the cautionary tales, how the depraved captain of the _Fury_ has ravished the dear wife or daughter of so-and-so, but no woman’s been in that bed against her will, Isabela would bet on it.

She imagines being taken to bed under the dragon’s beady stare and shudders, something halfway between thrill and revulsion curling inside her belly. Well, not that she’s one to judge: she’s had sex in sight of weirder things, including her own mother once, passed out in a drunken haze.

Loquita helps herself to a bottle of aged rum and uncorks it with her teeth, then takes a long draught before handing it to Isabela. The liquid burn follows the treacly taste of molasses, and she hands the bottle to Malik before directing her attention to the desk. Charts and maps are strewn over the surface, along with a velvet-bound copy of _Storms of Temptation_ —the books in the cabin are not all for show, then—and a pile of fresh letters that catch Isabela’s eyes. She’s read and annotated Hawke’s journal often enough to recognize her hand, even careless with exhaustion.

 _Dear Provisional Viscount Bran of Kirkwall_ , she reads, and she almost laughs. Of all the things you might expect from Bran, succor certainly isn’t it, and Hawke knows that better than anyone. _First, allow me to apologize for the sudden, nay, explosive end of our association, and invoke several years of continued partnership to implore your aid_ —

Isabela sweeps the whole stack of letters and maps off the desk, and tosses the first things within reach across the cabin. One of the mullioned windows shatters when the sextant strikes the glass; the book falls to the floor with a thud, and the bottle of rum explodes in an amber shower against the gilt mouldings of the wall. “Couldn’t the little bitch just stay put and let herself get rescued?!” she shouts, then kicks the desk for good measure.

Bloody useless, as far as displays go, but damn if she doesn’t feel the tiniest bit better afterward.

“That was good rum, you know,” Malik says, one corner of his mouth curled up under the waxed end of his mustache.

“I know,” she sighs. Balls, so much for feeling better. “ _Shit_.”

Loquita sits on the desk, legs crossed primly at the ankles, then starts juggling her throwing knives with loose, practiced movements. “So, were you ever planning on telling us how much coin this Hawke is worth?” she asks, with about as much subtlety as a knife to the back.

“Don’t start,” Isabela warns, her voice pitched low. “The cargo on this ship is worth a lot more than a ransom.”

The look Loquita throws her is sharper than the blades flitting in front of her heart-shaped face. Nothing soft about the elf: she’s all in points and edges, from ears to knives to filed teeth. “And we could’ve gone after an actual prize instead of doing your dirty work and gotten a whole lot more.”

Isabela almost tells her to shut up, but bites it back just in time. What can she even say? That she owes Hawke after the fool dueled a man twice her size on her behalf? Too trite, too reductively transactional to describe what forged itself between them over the years, strong as silverite and precious as twists of gold wire. They’re _friends_ , and when Hawke—who’s been loved and wanted and spoiled most of her life—didn’t get it, Fenris did. The least Isabela can do is bring the damned lovebirds back together.

“I’d do the exact same thing for any of you and you know it,” she says with a vague gesture towards the main deck, where the rest of her crew is.

Loquita catches her knives and sticks them back into her belt one at a time. “But _she’s_ not one of us.”

Isabela opens her mouth, but Malik saves her this time. “Any chance Hawke can get us what she promised Kasra if we find her?” her quartermaster asks over the rustling of papers. He’s crouched to the floor, gathering the letters scattered on the scuffed wood. His gray gaze flicks once in her direction. “The boys aren’t going to scour the Bay just for a pretty face.”

“Not unless they can stick their cocks in it,” Loquita points out unnecessarily.

The back of Isabela’s mouth tastes sour, but as much as she hates it, she knows they’re right. She has to make it worth their while, or she’ll have a mutiny on her hands. It’s not a betrayal, she reminds herself, not yet anyway. It’s all empty words till they find Hawke, and for that she needs her crew to cooperate.

“If it comes to that, I’ll see to it that she does,” Isabela replies.

Then she turns on her heel and leaves the captain’s cabin without waiting for an answer. Outside, she tries to bury the unease twisting her gut under a deep gulp of salt air, to little avail. The slate expanse of the Bay is aflame now, a sheet of pound gold under the morning sun; the domes and vaults of Dairsmuid rise before pale wisps of clouds stretched across an azure sky, and a gust of sea wind tosses her hair wild around her face as she walks down the scorched deck with a confidence she doesn’t feel. “Found a fortune’s worth of spices and Antivan red below for our trouble, gents,” she says, slanting her mouth in a cocky grin.

Her crew nod and smile at each other, appeased for the time being. Isabela considers the others, the dozen men and women whose lives she holds in the palm of her hand: they wait on their knees like they were in prayer—and they very well might be—wrists bound behind their backs, her crew’s sabres and swords trained on them. Anger fills her at their sight. _No fucking quarter_ , she wants to say, the words ready to fall from the space between her lips, lethal as the hand holding the blade. Some dark part of her clamours for their blood, but she thinks of Hawke, who chose to jump overboard rather than staying behind to fight, and hesitates. Damn it all to the Void. Might be her years with Hawke have made her soft, but she has no quarrel with Kasra’s crew; the poor sods were only following orders, after all, and she’d expect no less from her own.

“I think my crew is entitled to a little action after you interrupted their shore leave,” she starts as she walks towards Kasra. The air grows tense around her, so quiet everyone must hear her daggers whisper out of their sheaths. A couple of her men elbow each other in anticipation. “How about a duel—with the lives of your crew on the line?”

Kasra’s jaw tightens, the small muscles shifting under the battle-scarred skin. “A duel,” she spits, “when I’ve just fought an abomination? Might as well just go ahead and kill me now.”

“I’d be careful if I were you,” Isabela taunts, wagging one blade reproachfully. “You might just convince me. But no, just killing you’s no fun.” At that she lets one of her daggers clatter to the planks, sends it sliding across the deck with one foot, and makes a show of folding her arm behind her back. She leans forward to look the kneeling Tal-Vashoth in the eye, offering her a choice view down her corselet by the same occasion—Isabela’s nothing if generous, after all. “I like to make it last,” she purrs, her lips inches from Kasra’s.

A couple of men whoop at that, but Kasra simply stares back at her, yellow irises blazing like fire out of the dark. Then she pulls herself to her feet and stretches herself to her full height, horns almost grazing the rigging overhead. Malik cuts her bindings loose, and Loquita saunters towards her, morning star in hand, and presents it to her.

The spikes of the weapon are almost as sharp as the tines of Kasra’s horns; they catch the sunlight as she rolls her shoulders, tests the balance of the weapon in her hands, stretches her arm despite the fresh burns marring the silvery sheen of her skin. If it hurts, she shows no sign of it. Isabela adopts a fighting stance and raises her dagger.

Kasra charges.

The morning star whooshes through the air, but Isabela dances out of the way. She moves in fast, easy circles inside the ring of raiders around them, while Kasra fights with the desperation of the condemned. She strikes, again and again, whirling her morning star overhead every time, but Isabela’s light on her feet. _Like the sea_ , she remembers, the words clear as the day her lover of yore gave her her first blades. _Strike her and she parts; hold her and yet she escapes_. She moves in just close enough to taunt Kasra, slashing thin scarlet lines on the woman’s bare arms while the circle of blurred faces hoots and claps all around them. Her missing dagger hardly matters; she only needs one strike to win this duel.

The rush of battle pounds high in her throat; her lungs are full of the crisp salt air, and the deck is bright with sunlight under her feet. Enough foreplay. Isabela feints to one side, then thrusts the point of her dagger into Kasra’s thigh, sending her crumbling to her knees.

She lunges, but the morning star’s between them. Her blade catches on the tines and almost slips out of her grasp. Something wet fills her glove. Kasra sends her stumbling back with a hard shove, and the woman’s already back on her feet by the time Isabela finds her balance again. She dodges the morning star as it comes swinging down at her, then dodges again, but with all her attention on the weapon she misses Kasra’s foot till the toe of her boot sinks into her stomach.

Isabela slams back against the mainmast. The air whooshes out of her straining lungs; she gasps for breath, but the pain sends tears rushing to her eyes, and she blinks them out just in time to see the blurred arc of the morning star.

She dives out of its path right before it smashes into the mast with a thundering crash. Blood and chips of charred wood scatter on the planks as Isabela rolls back to her feet. Her blade slashes through empty air, and then Kasra’s upon her, the morning star abandoned where it sank into the mainmast. They hit the planks together in a tangle of kicking legs and punching fists, the raiders’ shouts and jeers a cacophonous din around them. Isabela’s dagger flies out of her grip. Her knuckles burn; she tastes copper, but has no idea whose blood is in her mouth. Kasra pulls on a fistful of her hair, sending pain blooming hot along her scalp as her head jerks back. Isabela claws at her face in retaliation, but the skin is thick and hard as tanned leather, and her fingernails can’t find purchase.

The eyes, then.

Kasra roars with pain, letting go of Isabela’s hair to clutch her eye instead. Isabela rolls on top of her, reaching for the knife tucked into her boot before driving it down, aimed at Kasra’s throat.

“ _Wait_ ,” Kasra pants. “I have your friend’s blood.”

Isabela stops herself just in time. Her knife hovers in midair, a mere hand’s span from its target. Her chest is heaving hard with every ragged breath. “ _What?_ ” she blurts out, still trying to make sense of the words through the haze of battle.

Kasra catches her breath, then tries to open her bloodshot eye, only to shut it again. “How did you intend to look for Hawke? Let us live, and I’ll give you the blood. Kill me and you may never find her.”

“End her!” someone yells.

“Do you want that bloody coin or not?” Isabela shouts in retort, her eyes not straying from Kasra’s bruised and bleeding face. That shuts him up. “Try _anything_ ,” she continues, staring into those smouldering black eyes, “and I’ll be wearing those horns of yours as a hat. Understood?”

Kasra swallows hard, then nods. Isabela stares down at her a moment longer, till the urge to stick her blade into the woman’s throat passes. Then she pulls herself back to her feet, returns the knife to its spot in her boot, and dusts the ash off her clothes. Her bruises are already starting to make themselves known, patches of skin throbbing all over her sore body. Her hand is hurting like a bitch, and she peels off her torn glove to reveal a nasty gash mangling her palm. Wincing, she tugs the kerchief loose from her hair to secure it around her hand in a makeshift bandage.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Kasra push herself up with difficulty. “Show me that blood,” Isabela tells her, ignoring the spectators’ obvious consternation, then turns to Malik. “Make sail for Dairsmuid,” she commands, and tries not to limp as she follows Kasra to her cabin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like not to take too much time between updates, but under the circumstances, mustering the motivation and energy to write has been pretty challenging. I apologize in advance for any delays, and I wish everyone the best!
> 
> Kudos and comments always welcome and appreciated! Come say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com)! <3


	11. Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke makes it to the Rivaini capital of Dairsmuid after escaping Kasra Adaar and her raiders, but soon finds out she’s jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amabel’s tarot card is the Tower, once again painted by the amazingly talented [Eleonor Piteira](https://eleonorpiteira.tumblr.com/), who was just the absolute greatest to work with! <3 You can view all three cards for this fic [here](https://eleonorpiteira.tumblr.com/post/189497548854/there-is-no-joy-except-that-which-we-make-for)!
> 
> Please note this chapter contains a brief, non-explicit sex scene and some mild violence.

**Part II: Dairsmuid**

The men laugh and chatter as they haul cargo down the docks, too focused to hear Hawke just a few feet below. “I’m here,” she says, her voice a trickle. She reaches up with one trembling hand, but the wood of the pillar is too slick, smoothed by years upon years of tides and waves. A sharp pain—the shell of a limpet or barnacle scratching her palm—and Hawke sinks back into the crystalline waters of the Bay. “I’m here,” she tries again, but the water leaps, and a wavelet laps at her face.

Fire runs up her nostrils and down her throat. Her feet kick up gray-gold clouds of sand as she coughs and thrashes, swallowing mouthfuls of seawater for her trouble. The surface of the Bay seals over her face; the last of her air rises in a frothy stream, and the pounding whoosh of water against her eardrums drowns out the voices and laughter. Just out of reach, the dock ripples before a blinding sky, and the crisscrossing spars of sunlight start to dim. Her chest is aflame.

Just her luck. Swimming across half the bay only to drown in a few feet of water.

Nothing but the blaze behind her ribs, the high keening pressure to _breathe breathe breathe_. Her head is about to burst with the screaming urgency of it when something seizes her by the waist. Couldn’t fight it off even if she wanted to, but then she breaches the surface and the world explodes around her: colours and light and noise slamming into place, the sun too loud and hot on her face, a flood of voices and the trilling cries of seabirds and the roaring pain of her lungs filling again.

Hawke coughs-sobs- _breathes_. More hands: they haul her out of the water and onto the wet, warm wood of the dock, roll her over onto her stomach, rub her back vigorously till she’s done retching seawater. Maker, there’s so much of it some silly, self-conscious part of her is embarrassed. Not her most dignified moment, what with the tears and snot and seawater puddling under her while she heaves, but she’s alive, and _free_ , and that alone tastes sweeter than the fiery, sandpaper breaths tearing their way down her throat.

Bodies crowd her, bare shoulders and shaved heads glaring under the high sun. Voices drift down to her in fragments; not any language she knows, Hawke realizes after a moment, at least not until one of the men hands her something. “Take this,” he says in lightly accented Common.

A waterskin. Hawke tries to thank him, but only manages a voiceless wheeze. Her lips are cracked and bleeding, and her tongue feels too big for her mouth. The first swallow sears its way down her raw throat, but she drains the rest in just a few greedy gulps, then squeezes the last drops out to rinse the salt out of her eyes.

She’s embarrassed to hand him his waterskin empty, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “Are you all right?” he asks, brow furrowed. “Did you fall in?”

Hawke shakes her head, the spreading puddle rippling with the droplets falling from her clothes and hair. One of the dock workers is waving the onlookers away, and she recognizes the man who fished her out only by his soaked trousers and the water sluicing down his broad back. _The catch of the day_ , she thinks, and coughs up a wet laugh. “Raiders,” she rasps as she pulls herself up on wobbling legs.

The men’s heads snap towards the offing, narrowed eyes scrutinizing the Bay. Hawke doesn’t spare a single glance over her shoulder: she staggers towards the harbour instead, pools glimmering gold in her wake as she wrings the water out of her soaked shift and hair, and doesn’t turn back even when the men call out after her.

Dairsmuid—is it?—rises before her in gentle slopes and white-paved roads, so bright under the blazing Rivaini sun she has to squint. She stumbles on, aimless, and slips into the crowd milling about the harbour. It moves slowly, to its own sinuous rhythm, shuffling around her like a school of fish clad in colourful silk. Fishmongers are showing off and auctioning their catches, heckled playfully by customers; wafts of cold radiate off the ice runes on the stalls and raise the hairs on her arms as she walks past baskets of cockles and mussels. Hawke doesn’t care where she’s going, as long as it’s away from the sea. The wares turn from fish to glassware and leather as she makes her way inwards, and the piping music of some strange instrument drifts to her from afar. Somewhere behind the domed roofs, a crowd is whistling and whooping.

And through it all—

The silver peal of Chantry bells, chiming noon in the distance. The relief surging through her is like the swell of a river in spring, rising from its bed to carry away even the heaviest of stones.

Hawke almost bursts into tears.

Her faith is a bruised, battered thing, made even shyer over the years, but the Chantry means a meal and a bed, maybe even coin to pay for passage back to Llomerryn. Another turn up one of Dairsmuid’s scorching streets, and she spots the spiked wheel of the sunburst in the distance, its arc of light sizzling through the cloudless sky. Hawke lets it guide her steps like a lodestar through the night. She makes her way between vine-wreathed arches and espaliered trees, till the wheel vanishes behind a nearby dome; then she breaks into a light run, longing for the familiar sight to brand itself into her eyes again.

She trips and falls on all fours on the dusty cobblestones. Her palms and knees burn with a nostalgic sort of pain she hasn’t felt since she was a child, splashing clear stream water with yells of laughter and bare legs covered in bug bites. All she can do is stare down at the tiny flowers growing in the sand between the blurring stones, till she notices the feet clustering around her. No one would’ve helped her in Kirkwall, not without wanting something in return, but here the people are bent over her, mouths forming questions she can’t hear, hands pulling her up to her feet and dusting the pebbles off her grazed knees—

Hawke runs. She runs into the heart of the city, up bright sloping streets and curling sweeps of stairs. Brick walls and tumbles of greenery flit on either side; voices rise from windows thrown wide open, while women beat carpets and fresh laundry billows in the breeze overhead. Hawke’s breaths come in sharp, painful bursts before long, and the cobblestones leave her bare feet scraped and bleeding, but still she doesn’t stop running till the Chantry bursts into her field of vision again.

It’s nothing like the intimidating towers that loomed over Hightown. The Chantry of Dairsmuid is all airy, scalloped arches and spare, delicate lines; patterned mosaics ripple like fish scales in the sunlight, and atop the highest dome the sunburst catches the light of the real sun and throws it back just as bright.

Hawke runs up the stairs of rose marble leading to the open doorway two at a time. She trips again. Her shin strikes the edge of a marble step, and pain crackles from the bruised bone to the back of her eyes, hot tears searing her lashes together.

When she opens them again, she sees the statue for the first time. Before her stands Andraste on her pyre, bright as molten gold. The mosaic on her robes is made of turquoise and softly shimmering nacre, and her hair cascades down her shoulders in curls so soft one forgets they’re sculpted from stone. Her tears are crystals that would’ve long been stolen back in Kirkwall, and the flames—the flames are not flames but _flowers_ , bigger than any Hawke has ever seen: blooms so brilliant they half-blind her in the sun, glossy green leaves and curved yellow petals unfurling from a scarlet heart. They grow twined to a trellis at the statue’s back, wreathing the Lady and creeping around the hilt of Archon Hessarian’s sword, sprouting from her breast against a splash of crimson tilework.

A fork-tailed gull perches on Andraste’s outstretched hand. It shakes the seawater off its wings, and the droplets splinter the sunlight like the crystal tears on her cheeks.

Hawke hauls herself up the last few remaining steps, then falls at the statue’s feet, where wilted flowers, coins and candles have been laid in offering. Her brow drops to her fists as though she were in prayer, but her respite is short-lived: soon silhouettes and voices are gathering again around her, and she lifts her head to see the hard glare of plate in the sunlight.

Fear seizes her, a cold, cruel thing that freezes the breath in her still-aching lungs. For a moment she’s back in the last place she called home, all alone with the deafening hush of her magic silenced. All she hears is what another man in armour told her as he towered over her: _you mages have had your chance_ , he’d said, his face as hard as the metal of his breastplate. His gauntlet flashes under the sun; there’s a thin lace of frost on the windows and the sharp menacing scent of lyrium instead of the warm smells of her kitchen, and she knows, she _knows_ he’s going to reach for his sword next, and this time Fenris isn’t here to save her.

Fenris isn’t here, and Hawke does what she should’ve done.

The Veil is thick as molasses when she reaches through with her mind, but a weak pulse of magic is enough to send the armoured man stumbling back. Scattered exclamations rise from the square. Hawke scrambles away, grabbing the trellis to pull herself up.

Not fast enough. The man is still swaying on his feet, but someone else grabs her. Hawke clings to the unsanded slats of the trellis; she screams and pulls and kicks, tearing chunks out of the Fade and tossing them in aimless, half-formed spells. Broken blossoms and leaves litter the rose marble at her feet. Her fingers come off the trellis sticky with sap and raw with splinters, but still she strikes with feet and fists, ignoring the bruising pain of plate and chainmail under her balled hands. Someone shouts for help, and Hawke only has time to glimpse the woman standing within the wide doorway of the Chantry, one hand raised and bright with magic, before she’s borne away in a swift, soundless current.

* * *

“Still abed?”

The bed dips under Fenris’s weight. Hawke mumbles something in assent and burrows deeper into the blankets, then squeals in protest when he sticks his cold nose into the hollow behind her ear. “I’m awake, I’m awake. Maker, you’re so cold,” she whines over the rumble of his laughter against her back. She rolls over, arcs her body in a long, luxurious stretch, then lifts the blankets with one arm. “Come on, get yourself into bed. _Brr_.”

Fenris runs an appreciative gaze over her naked body before slipping into bed with her. “Not too cold for you?” he asks, one chilly hand sliding up the curve of her hip.

“You know me.” She draws him close despite the outside cold sticking to his skin and clothes, and plants a quick kiss on the tip of his nose. “I can’t stand the sight of some poor Tevinter freezing his beautiful nose off.”

Fenris arches an eyebrow and quirks one corner of his mouth. His eyes are bright, his cheeks reddened with cold, and the crisp scent of autumn and burned leaves sticks to his hair. Chopping wood, maybe—she thought she heard the sound of an ax earlier through the haze of her dreams, and regrets missing the chance to watch him at work, the sweeping arc of his arm confident, his eyes focused under a sheaf of silver hair. “Oh? And do you often let Tevinters into our bed?”

One of his knees slips between her thighs. Hawke shivers, and not because of the cold this time. Her legs fall open around his hips; he settles between them, and the cold metal of his belt buckle drags a hiss out of her when it presses against her inner thigh. “Just the handsome ones,” she answers, looping her arms around his neck in a loose hold. “The others get to cuddle Maker’s Bark in front of the hearth.”

The deep thrum of his laugh against her neck leaves her skin crackling with desire. “How generous of you.” His mouth is as hot on her throat as his hands are cold on the rest of her; Hawke tilts her head back, and his lips move up her neck and along her jaw, then tug gently at her earlobe. “And how do you go about warming them?” he whispers into her ear, his warm breath teasing the little hairs on her temple.

Not fair. Liquid heat pools in the pit of her stomach; he could take her right now and she’d be ready for him, but her impatience is bound to frustration against one of Fenris’s teasing moods.

“Like so,” Hawke answers instead. She curls her hands around the chilly tips of his ears, then catches his lips with hers as gentle warmth banks between her fingers. Fenris melts against her with a contented sigh, and for a long, achingly sweet moment they do nothing but kiss, lips moving in slow interlocking shapes, tongues meeting in brief touches. When his ears are warm again, her hands move to cover his, and the soft, lazy glow of her spell flickers once at the touch of his markings.

They stay like this, till her magic and the mounting heat of their kiss ward off the last of the cold. Their mingling breaths have grown warm in the space between their lips, the quickening rap of their heartbeats keeping time against one another. Fenris says her name like a question, and her answer is a single whispered word. The strong muscles of his shoulders shift under the soft pilling wool of his shirt as he moves to undo his belt; he eases himself into her, and then their bodies are making their own heat in the most mundane and sublime way. Hawke lets her eyes flutter close and tangles her hands in Fenris’s hair, yielding to the movements of his body and the tightening coil of pleasure spooling slow inside her.

Somewhere outside the window, the treetops rustle in the wind—except it’s not the wind, but the _sea_ , waves roaring as they break upon some distant shore. “Hawke,” Fenris gasps against her lips, but the sound of her name is all _wrong_ , a gurgling wheeze that sends her pulse shooting high. Her eyes snap open into his hollow gaze; his hair is clumped together, and the shattered bone gives way under the pads of her fingers. A scream rises up her throat, but her mouth is still locked with his, and all about them the frothing tide is rising, swollen with strings of kelp and strange clawed things that pull her deeper and deeper—

Hawke wakes up thrashing, her heart in her mouth. She tries to kick off the spindly things still clinging to her legs, and slaps away the hands wrapped around her wrists. “You’re safe now,” someone is saying, the soft, velvety voice hurtling her back into reality. Her wild eyes alight on a woman’s face, and the darkened room settles around her, the mattress steady under her weight and a tangle of bedsheets twisted around her legs. “Just breathe,” the woman says, one thumb stroking Hawke’s wrist. Her eyes are kind within her plump, dark-skinned face. “Breathe with me.”

No air can get past the scream stuck crosswise in her throat; no water but Hawke is drowning again, her windpipe needle-thin, her ribs sealed tight around her lungs. But still the woman breathes, and following her rhythm Hawke feels her chest open up little by little, till there’s enough space beneath her breastbone for something other than the crazed thunder of her heartbeat.

She drops her face into her pillow and smothers a broken sob. _Just a dream_ , she reminds herself. No blood on her fingers, or bone fragments grinding together under her hands. No raiders, no shackles, no weals around her wrists. Just a pillow and a bed, and solid ground, steady below her. Maker, she’ll never take it for granted again.

But Fenris—

“I have to go,” she announces, then swings her legs off the bed. Her stomach is churning, her head pounding, but she ignores the way the patterns on the floor seem to dance under her feet. Clouds scud over the sun after a few short steps, casting the room into warm shadow, and then Hawke finds herself into the woman’s arms, her head filled with a low gray buzz.

“You’ve been out for a _day_ ,” the woman scolds her, helping Hawke back into bed and smoothing the bedsheet on top of her again. “You have no business out of bed so soon. Now open up.” Hawke opens her mouth, confused, and a cube of sugar is placed on her tongue. “Let it melt now, and don’t you move till I’ve returned.”

And then she’s gone, hurried footfalls disappearing down the hallway. Hawke’s head is still spinning, and her thoughts are slippery, darting out of sight like silverfish every time she tries to focus on them. She doesn’t trust her legs to carry her just yet, so she rolls the cube of sugar around her cheek, the sweetness not quite enough to conceal the medicinal taste of spindleweed. The blurs around her settle back into their shapes: folding screens and draped curtains suffused with gentle light, shelves replete with potions and pretty vials. Her wounds have been healed, and her rags, changed for a clean shift that smells of lye soap. A clinic, maybe, or an infirmary. She hears the strident calls of seagulls, somewhere outside, and the last few grains of sugar melt on her tongue, her stomach settled at last.

Hawke doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but when she opens her eyes again, someone else is standing at the foot of her bed. She sits up, wide awake, as memories spring forth: the Chantry gates, rose marble and crushed flowers under the bruised soles of her feet, and a woman with her hand full of light.

“At last she’s come to,” the woman in question says, pulling the curtains on their brass pole to let the slanting sun into the room. Her skin is a similar shade of bronze to Fenris’s, and her hair gathered at the back of her head in fused, ropey locks, but there’s something unmistakably southern somewhere in the high bridge of her nose and the sweeping arch of her brow. “How are you feeling?”

Hawke ignores the question. “You were at the Chantry,” she stutters, her heart now beating faster than the wings of a frightened sparrow.

Not quite a question, but the woman nods all the same. “Yes. My name is Rivella. What should we call you?”

Hawke slides to her feet and shoves past Rivella. “Thank you for looking after me,” she says, not even trying to stamp the shrill note out of her voice. “I’ll be on my way now.”

She shakes Rivella’s hand off her shoulder then marches across the infirmary, her exhaustion forgotten. It’s fear driving her now; danger rings high in the air like a sour note, and it rises to a scream when she sees the man practically filling the doorway, at ease but imposing.

Carved on his breastplate, the Blade of Mercy is staring at her like a bad joke.

 _The Circle. Andraste help me, I’m in the Circle_.

“I am Knight-Commander Badr,” he says over the blood pounding in her ears. “You were brought here after attacking a guardsman—”

“No,” Hawke says, throwing all the strength she doesn’t have behind this one word. “ _No_. I can’t _be_ here. There’s someone I—somewhere I have to—”

Her voice dies in her throat, and she starts tugging at the sleeves of her shift, turns her bare arms under the dust motes swirling in the reddish glow of late afternoon. Not the slightest nick she can see, just one thin, pale scar long healed in the crook of her elbow, courtesy of a Carta thug. “Did you,” she starts, her voice an animalistic rasp, “did you take my blood?”

Badr throws Rivella a glance, then straightens himself up as if to give himself some countenance. “Your phylactery is in the vault with the others, yes.”

Hawke pictures them bent over her sleeping body, slicing a vein open to fill a vial and work some spell on it; she remembers Rosalba’s mad laughter, the crimson web of her magic pressing down on her, the blood welling up in the hollow of her palm. She thinks of her father, his warm, broad back bent under the weight of everything he suffered to keep his daughters out of the Circle, and she thinks of Fenris, of everything he sacrificed so _she_ might be safe: his freedom, his friends, his home, and now for all she knows his _life_. A lifetime of hiding, of running while the Templars snapped at her heels, of keeping her magic clutched to herself like some shameful secret and smiling through the Chant even as it cursed her and her ilk, only for her to stumble right into their grasp and have everything she holds dear knocked out of her hands.

Bloodsuckers, all of them.

A sound like ripping fabric cuts through the quiet, and Hawke realizes it’s her, screaming as she lunges for Badr. She smashes one fist crackling with lightning to his face; the metallic tang of lyrium shears through her magic, but even as she sways on the edge of a deep, dark hush, the smell of burnt flesh sizzles through the room, and the Knight-Commander drops to one knee.

 _Good_ , Hawke thinks, clawing at his face like a cat gone feral. Magic or no magic, she wants to hurt him, make him bleed like he made her bleed, shed torrents of blood for every drop they keep in their vault. He kneels there, arms raised defensively, while she pummels him with fists beating down as quick and hard as her pulse, till something brushes her mind like a bird on the wing.

Hawke finds herself crumpled on the floor, burned out, hollowed out. She tries to reach for her magic again, but it’s ashes now, scattered in the storm. The Knight-Commander staggers back to his feet, lifting a hesitant hand to the streaks burned down his bald head. One of his eyes is shot through with blood, the white turned a startling shade of red against skin the colour of wet soil.

“Leave us, Badr,” Rivella says, her voice surprisingly steady. “Get yourself healed.”

He obeys at once, touching his trembling fist to his heart before leaving. Rivella’s gaze caroms back to Hawke, and the anger is plain in her eyes now, seething right under the veneer of composure. “Was it a mistake to think you could be trusted?”

“What did you do to me?” Hawke asks in retort, but her lips are numb, and her tongue too thick for her mouth. Her limbs feel heavy, like the hollow of her bones has been filled with lead, but the anger remains, roiling somewhere deep under the surface.

“A weakening spell, nothing more. It will wear off in a minute or two.”

Hawke manages to sit back on her heels and wrap her arms around herself, but the effort is such her teeth start chattering. “I can’t stay,” she says, hating the pleading note in her voice. “I have to leave this place.”

Rivella cups Hawke’s face with one warm palm that smells of tobacco smoke and green herbs. Her hands are tattooed from wrist to fingertip, swirls of ink disappearing into the heavy drape of her sleeve. “Listen to me,” she says, forcing Hawke to look at her with a nudge of her hand. “I know it may be hard to believe, but you’re lucky we’re the ones who found you. The Seekers of Truth are nowhere near as kind with the apostates crossing their path. As long as you’re here, though, you have the protection of the Circle.”

“What protection is there,” Hawke spits, “in the bloody Circle?”

“Then trust that you have mine.”

But her voice parts around Hawke’s mind, and the words scatter, meaningless. Rivella’s eyes are green too, cooler and grayer, but next to her bronze skin it’s enough to put Hawke in mind of Fenris again, and she shuts her eyes— _oh_ , but then it’s worse, because it’s him filling the dark beneath her eyelids, brilliant and brave and—not there.

Her gaze drops like an anchor. Little red crescents cake the underside of her fingernails; she rubs them off the ridged, grainy surface of the floor tiles, but she can still feel the bone shards of Fenris’s skull under her fingers, and her nails will give way long before the memory does.

“I need to go to him,” Hawke says on a rough, shuddering breath. “He’s all I have left. I need to know if he’s _alive_.”

Something tears open as the words drag their thorns out of her. All her pent fear and rage and sorrow start pouring out the slashed membrane of her heart, rising like some seething black sea, brimming over and spilling in great gushing gouts. Her skin is too small to hold the undammed flood of it all, but if Hawke lets it out she’s going to break into pieces under the pressure and never come back together again, so she buries her hands into the snarls of her hair, pulls at the roots, and waits to drown.

“Oh,” Rivella sighs, the sound halfway between breath and word. Her hand slides into her hair and clasps the base of her skull, and that strange, airy touch skims past Hawke’s mind again. Something small and fragile shifts inside her, delicate as the stem of a flower dropping its blossom. Hawke falls forward, curled in on herself; her cheek longs for the hollow of Fenris’s shoulder blades but finds the crook of Rivella’s neck instead, and then the tears start falling, a spring shower then a downpour, graceless in their cleansing: she can’t hold them back any more than she could go back in time to save Fenris, so she cries like wounds bleed, like waterfalls wear cliffs away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, sorry this took a while! I seem to be finally getting my writing mojo back after a few painfully unproductive weeks, and I hope everyone is doing well despite ... well, _everything_. We finally get to meet again the characters from the prologue, so this is another chapter I’ve been really looking forward to posting. I hope it was worth the wait!
> 
> Kudos and comments welcome and appreciated as always, and feel free to come ~~yell at me~~ say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com) as well! <3


	12. Isabela

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabela arrives in Dairsmuid, with only a vial containing Hawke’s blood to track her down, given to her by Kasra—useless unless she can get a mage to help her out, but the seers of Dairsmuid have all but vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! I decided to rewrite this one from scratch so it took a little bit more time.
> 
> Please note this chapter contains a brief sex scene (it’s an Isabela chapter after all!).

Isabela holds out the vial containing Hawke’s blood across the low table, and watches the seer’s face fall.

Well, _fall_ is a strong word: the woman’s lips part for no more than an instant, and a faint, thin crease appears between her plucked eyebrows. She checks herself almost instantly, but evenings wiled away over cards have made Isabela adept at catching little tells like that: sudden silence from Hawke’s corner of the table, Fenris reaching for a slug of wine when he’s got a good hand, Varric faking tells so consistently to throw them off the scent she learned to decode them after a year or two.

Here, though, under the golden drapes of the seer’s tent, it can only mean one thing.

“And you’re not a mage,” she says, throwing her head back to release the sigh that’s been swelling inside her for the better part of three days.

To her credit, the seer—well, the _not_ -seer, and with a moniker as ridiculous as Madam Satina Isabela _really_ should’ve seen it coming—drops the act at once. It’s one thing to pretend reading the lines of someone’s palm and study their expression for hints; quite another to forge a tracking spell on an ounce of blood or two.

Satina hangs her head, chastened, and the beaded hoops dangling from her ears clink softly. “I’m sorry,” she says, and suddenly even her accent isn’t quite as pronounced. “If I’d known that’s what you wanted—”

“You wouldn’t have tried ripping me off?” Isabela finishes for her, rolling the faceted glass of the vial between her fingers. “Risky. I’m not one of your loose-pursed Antivan tourists. I know how this bloody country works.”

She does, and that’s why she can’t muster any heat as she speaks. Had fate taken a different turn, it might’ve been her sitting on that tasseled cushion, swindling tourists out of their coin over steepled hands. Her own deceit from long ago, thrown back in her face. A weight sits heavy in her chest, like a mouthful of wine going down the wrong way, and she thinks of the poor sods who begged her mother for guidance, only to be sent on their way with lies and overpriced baubles.

Isabela didn’t even exist back then, she reminds herself. She was still just Naishe, fourteen and running barefoot on quays, taught to take her coin and pleasure where she could because no one would give it to her otherwise. You play the hand you’re dealt, and she can’t fault the woman for bluffing.

“Can’t afford to turn down the work,” Satina replies blithely. “I have mouths to feed.”

Isabela snorts. “Bullshit,” she says, returning the vial to the pouch at her waist and fastening the leather cords. Opportunity, nothing more: now that the seers have all but vanished from Dairsmuid’s white-cobbled streets, the conmen have come to fill the void. Isabela tosses her hair over her shoulder and rests her chin on twined fingers, elbows propped on the low table. “I paid you for answers, though, so I expect some.”

Satina levels a defiant stare at her, mouth thinned to a stern line. “What do you want?”

“Where are the mages? The _real_ ones?”

“How would I know?”

“Last time I was here, you couldn’t swing a dead nug in this Maker-forsaken city without hitting a mage. Something’s happened.”

Rivain was built on the ancient secrets of the seers. Once they walked these streets proudly, the coin sewn to their hems jangling with their steps, the crowds parting before them like water; snakes and jeweled scarabs crawled on their shoulders, and tattoos and swirls of golden paint adorned their skin like lace. Everything to flaunt themselves as not quite of this world: above it or beyond, depending on your take, yet strangely never immune to the draw of a few gold pieces.

Sure, the merchants are still there, brandishing embroidered scarves and picking out jewels to match her eyes, but without the hails of fortune tellers and palm readers, without magic—or at least the promise of it—filling the air like perfume, Dairsmuid might as well have lost the colour green or the hushed roar of waves breaking on its shore.

“Fine,” Satina relents, and her voice drops to a murmur, barely loud enough to be heard over the street noises filtering through the tent from outside. “These Chantry men came from Orlais two moons back. You see them patrolling the streets sometimes, staring you down like they own the place.” Her lip curls with the words, her tone too acerbic for pretense. The truth this time, Isabela knows. “They caught a couple of apostates”—the word spoken like a curse—“in the first few days and made an example out of them, and the rest scurried away after that. Not a mage in sight since.”

“These men. Templars?”

“No. The Seekers of Truth, they call themselves. I’d never even heard of them before.”

“I have,” Isabela says, simply. A lifetime ago Hawke was safely aboard the _Pearl Oyster_ , and her blue eyes blazed as she spoke of them, two angry spots of colour spreading on her cheeks. Fenris had skimmed one comforting thumb along her knuckles, Isabela remembers, though his own eyes were hard, his jaw squared and tight. One of those so-called Seekers had tried squeezing Hawke’s whereabouts out of Varric, and the news had set Hawke and Fenris southward, treading the dusty ribbon of the Imperial Highway from Nevarra to Ferelden.

No wonder Hawke took her chances with the sea.

She’s still just one woman, though, and they couldn’t possibly have known she’d end up here in Dairsmuid. “Any idea why they’re here?” Isabela asks.

“Investigating the Circle, from what I’ve gathered. The mages could come and go as they pleased before, but now they’re stuck there for good.” Satina chuckles mirthlessly, ticking one sharp fingernail on the worn wood of the table. “Rumour has it they’ve got a royal in there. Must be why the Queen tolerates their presence in the city.”

Mages are _supposed_ to forsake all claims and titles, but if Hawke—scion of house Amell, Champion of Kirkwall—has made anything clear, it’s that names have a magic of their own. This could get ugly, and doubtless the Queen knows it. The fate of rulers is not impervious to the Chantry’s will, even though the royal family is Andrastian—though as with all things in Rivain, the definition of the word is rather generous. The people of Dairsmuid may recite the Chant and pray to Andraste, but the old magic of the country runs in their veins, and it’s the seers they rely on for every practical thing, from advice to midwifery. A tenuous balance at the best of times, but it held till the Seekers entered the picture.

Well, good thing Isabela’s not the queen: _a_ queen, certainly, standing at the wheel of her own free, floating realm, with no man or god to answer to but the screaming seas. Solid ground is treacherous, in its own slow, patient way: stay in one place too long, and you might miss the fetters tightening at your ankles till too late. Better the immediate danger of the ever-shifting rather than the curse of the landbound.

At least Isabela can set sail again as soon as she’s found Hawke—but first, she’s got to flush the mages out of their hidey-hole. “You really have no idea where the rest of the mages could’ve gone?”

Satina gives a sullen shrug that looks frankly out of place on a grown woman. “Away from the city, if they’re any smart. Or maybe they brought themselves to drop all the trappings and are hiding in plain sight.”

Isabela laughs despite herself at the unexpected quip. “The seers keeping a low profile? Things are dire indeed.”

But a memory springs forth at the words: a symbol, red paint—or blood, she wouldn’t put it past Kirkwall—peeling off the winding alleyways and granite cliffs. The ancient heraldry turned rallying cry, first by the slaves who built the city stone by stone, then by the mages of the Gallows. Knight-Commander Meredith’s Templars had dismantled the mage underground during Isabela’s last year in Kirkwall, but the Seekers don’t have the home advantage like the Templars did there.

The spark of outrage takes her by surprise. Apparently she’s still got enough Rivaini blood left undiluted by saltwater to hate the idea of the seers cowering in the sewers like rats. Her people belong under high suns and spread sails, not in the dark.

What would a mage underground look like here, in Dairsmuid?

“Thanks,” Isabela says, pushing herself off the floor cushion. “Oh, and if I were you, I’d pick another occupation to impersonate. You don’t want to find out what will convince the Seekers you’re _not_ a mage.”

Satina blanches, and Isabela takes her leave at that—though not before stealing back the coin she paid at the start of their sham session.

The sun has dipped low behind the buildings by the time she ducks out of the tent, dyeing Dairsmuid in burnished orange. Pieron’s still where she left him in the swaying shade of the palm trees, leaning back against the adobe wall skirting the avenue with his arms crossed over his chest. “No luck?” he asks with a sympathetic grimace.

Isabela sighs, and her neck gives a couple of satisfying cracks and pops as she stretches. “Don’t you hate it when you can’t just wave a knife or some coin at a problem to make it go away? You’d think I’m looking for Captain Revaud’s lost treasure or something.”

He wraps an arm around her waist as they slip into the crowd and head back to the cheap inn room she’s renting. “Maybe you should ask them,” he says, and Isabela follows his gaze to a group of Templars, walking two abreast. One of them sports a startlingly red eye and fresh, fern-like scars on his bald head; she’s seen much worse, but under Dairsmuid’s pleached trees and store awnings, it’s unexpected enough she has to make an effort not to stare. “Hey, tried the Circle? Bound to be a few in there, at least,” Pieron continues with a lopsided grin.

She rolls her eyes. “Not funny,” she says, but Maker, how desperate is she to consider it? The sun’s low enough she can look straight at the Circle tower for once, its proud length spearing the burning sky, gold-leafed mosaics blazing like a ring of flames around the highest dome. Too risky, though. She can’t fathom the Templars’ reaction if she produced a vial of mage blood right under their noses, and the last thing she wants is to hand the Circle the key to tracking Hawke down.

Isabela presses the heels of her hands to her eyes, and lets Pieron guide her steps through the crowd till her eyeballs throb and strange colours swirl under her lids. “I need a stiff one and a drink,” she mutters.

“Well, I can help with one of those things,” Pieron says into her ear, and gives her arse a squeeze.

Maker bless him, he gives it his all that night, but even his two-pronged tongue can’t get her off. In the end she breaks another one of her rules and fakes her climax just to get him off her, then rides him facing his feet so she doesn’t have to pretend too hard. Her rules have served her well till now, so every night since they’ve docked she’s told herself it’d be the last time, yet every night she’s let him fuck the frustration out of her. You take your comfort where you can, and these days it happens to be astride Pieron’s tattooed cock.

It’s not working tonight, though. Her head’s too full of mages and Seekers and what have you for the friction to turn to pleasure. Her reflection stares back at her from the window, looking faintly bored as it moves up and down with the rolling motion of her hips; behind the glass panes, the glow of ships’ lanterns glides like fireflies across the cobalt of the Bay at dusk, while tiny silhouettes move to and fro along the wharves and piers.

The answer whips through her like a sail coming unlashed in the storm.

Isabela freezes into place, her hips hovering above Pieron’s. “They’re at sea,” she blurts out.

Pieron grunts a noise that could be _what?_ , then grabs her waist to start thrusting into her. Isabela slaps his hands away, bounces off the bed, and starts gathering her scattered clothes instead.

He drops his hips back to the mattress. “Bela?” he pants, propping himself up on an elbow.

“The mages,” she says excitedly, fumbling with the laces of her corselet. “They have to be at sea, or in a ship or _something_ , I’d bet on it.”

Pieron rubs the dark stubble on his jaw with one hand. “ _That’s_ what’s on your mind right now?”

He sounds entirely too piqued for someone who gets to fuck his captain, and she blows out an irritated sigh despite herself. “What? Unlike you men, I can think about more than one thing at a time,” she retorts, pulling her boots on.

He tries for charm this time, throwing an easy grin at her as he gestures towards his still-hard, gleaming cock. “You really going to leave this unattended?”

“You have hands. Use them.”

Isabela leaves the room and his dwindling curses, and after a moment’s deliberation, leaves the rest of her crew to their drinking and gambling. She steps into the balmy Dairsmuid night, a bottle of cheap Marcher red for sole company, and heads for the waterfront, where the warm scents of taverns’ kitchens and the delicate fragrance of flowering trees mingle with the briney tang of the sea.

Compared to Llomerryn, Dairsmuid’s downright charming, no matter the hour. Passersby stumble out of taverns laughing and stroll down the avenue in twos and fours; a fire eater is weaving circles of flames through the air to the delight of a dense crescent of spectators, and exclamations and the clink of coins join the even rhythm of the lapping waves. Isabela watches for a moment before making her way down the quieter end of the harbour, where the glow of torches pools undisturbed across the wharf.

Easy enough to find her ship on the water, even at night. The _Pearl Oyster_ and the _Fury_ are anchored side by side in the dark waters of the Bay, furled sails pale as closed flowers, a rippling web of moonlight reflected on the hulls. The _Fury_ will sail again, with new masts and sheets; they towed her to Dairsmuid after surrendering her dead to the sea and relieving her of her cargo, and Isabela left the surviving crew to nurse their wounds in the hold.

The sea wind rises across the water and riffles through her hair. If she finds a mage, she tells herself, watching the gentle sway of the ships in their moorings, she’ll get them to heal Kasra and her crew.

The Chantry bells chime midnight, then the first hour. In the distance, the fire eater douses their flame and melts into the dark, leaving nothing behind but phantom streaks in her eyes. The voices and laughter dwindle, then stop. A lone sailor sits with her on the low stone wall skirting the harbour, and accepts a swallow of her wine. “What are you looking for?” he asks, callused knuckles brushing hers.

“I’ll know when I see it.”

A bitter smile twists his mouth, then he pushes himself off the wall and moves on. She’s poor company and she knows it: not one for regrets, Isabela, but it’s all she can do not to think of Hawke drowned somewhere beneath the dark rippling sheet of the Bay, pale flesh picked clean off her bones by fish and seabirds. And Fenris—no, she can’t even bear to think of him, so she drains the bottle of wine, nearly choking on the lees, then tosses it at the water. It splashes on the surface, then bobs once or twice before sinking below the dancing moonlight. “Should’ve brought two,” she mutters.

Damn it. The worst is Hawke would’ve long found a way— _shit_ , knowing Hawke she’d have tripped down a staircase and plunged head first into a mage underground meeting. But Isabela’s searched every inn and tavern, she’s asked every shiphand and fishwife plying their trade on the weathered docks, she’s bribed and threatened and cajoled, and she still hasn’t got the faintest fucking clue where Hawke is.

Making a fine fool of herself, as always. She’s going to have a grand old time explaining that one to Pieron.

Her pulse thunders in her ears before she even knows what she’s looking at. A cloaked figure is making their way to the water, footsteps stiff, glances shifty. Amateur. Couldn’t be more obvious if they tried: even the greenest thief knows confidence is your best disguise, and that’s how Isabela acts now to avoid their attention, leaning back against the low wall with an insouciant toss of her hair. Just a woman down on her luck, drowning her misfortunes in cheap wine and the sight of the sea at night.

The figure settles on the thwart of a dinghy and throws one last cautious glance over their shoulder. Isabela’s heart leaps in her throat. The lanterns catch the streaks of fresh scars and one eye burning red in the firelight; it pauses on her for a second, then turns back to the Bay.

That Templar. If he thinks he’s getting to the mages before her, then he’s shit out of luck.

He dips his oar into the water, and the dinghy glides away from the harbour. Isabela doesn’t waste time: she takes off her boots and tucks them into the lee of the wall, then checks her belt for her daggers and the vial of blood. Then she makes her way down the pier, the damp wood worn smooth under the soles of her feet. The sea is calm, and for an instant she forces her breathing to match the waves. No treasure, this, but she revels in the anticipation all the same, like she might before the picked lock of a chest or the disrobed body of a lover.

She dives. The sea embraces her from steepled fingers to arched feet, warm froth tickling her bare limbs as she starts to swim. She stays underwater long enough for the Templar to return to his rowing if he’s heard anything, only crawling back to the surface when her lungs start burning. She follows at a safe distance after that; every time the man’s gaze sweeps the water she goes still and closes her eyes so the reflection of the moon doesn’t give her away. He still doesn’t seem to suspect her presence by the time their destination becomes obvious: a small fishing vessel, almost invisible in the night with its lanterns doused.

The two boats come abreast. A few kicks through the water and Isabela’s fingers close around the gunwale of the sternsheets. She hauls herself aboard the dinghy, and the Templar is still fumbling with his oar when her closed fist connects with the back of his head, sending him sprawled face first on the pitching bottom of the boat.

Her knee finds the dip between his shoulder blades. “Hey!” she yells towards the fishing boat, catching him in a chokehold. He grunts and tries to push her off, but she’s got him good. “Got a Templar for you!”

The deck is suddenly bustling with activity. A handful of faces appear above the rail, but her welcome isn’t exactly what she expected: a wave of energy ripples through the air, and the blunt force of it sends her rolling off the gunwale and back into the water.

Well. The good news is, she found the mages.

Isabela swallows a mouthful of seawater as she thrashes. Her eyes sting when she forces them open; thankfully, enough moonlight filters through the rippling froth for her to find her bearings again, and she breaches the surface coughing and sputtering.

“Who on earth are _you_?” a woman asks from the fishing boat, hand still aglow with the remnants of her spell.

Isabela spits. “What was _that_ for?” she retorts, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Thought I was doing you a favour.”

The people gathered on the deck exchange a few whispers and glances. No one seems surprised or bothered by the presence of a Templar a few feet away, panting and groaning as he hauls himself back on the thwart of his dinghy.

The woman lets her magic melt back into the Fade and lowers her hand. “He’s with us,” she answers.

Not what Isabela expected. “Huh. My bad, then.”

The Templar heaves a sigh, then stretches one large hand out to her. Tall, dark, and handsome, even— _especially_ —with the scars: the moonlight reflects in bright white shards on his cheekbones and the curve of his bald head, and he pulls her aboard almost effortlessly, his grip firm around her hand. She wouldn’t have fared nearly as well against him without the surprise effect, that much is obvious. “What gave it away?” he asks, seemingly more curious than anything. “I could’ve been visiting family for all you know.”

She snorts as she wrings the water out of her hair. “In the middle of the night, wearing that ridiculous cloak? Please.”

He quirks one corner of his mouth at that, then extends his hand. “Knight-Commander Badr,” he introduces himself.

“Captain Isabela,” she answers, and the lift of his eyebrow as they shake hands tells her he’s got a fair idea what kind of crew she commands.

The boats are roped together all the same, and Isabela follows Badr aboard. One of the mages rushes to him, sparks of healing magic at her fingertips, but he simply smiles and shakes his head. “Not my day,” he sighs in Rivaini.

Isabela’s reception isn’t quite so friendly, though. “Well?” the first mage asks, appraising her where she stands, dripping puddles onto the planks. Not the leader, if Isabela had to guess—that honour must fall to the stooped, wrinkled thing leaning against the starboard rail, bent under enough scarves to fill a market stall—but no use antagonizing her. “What’s your game?”

The others too are staring at her with the same hard expressions, mouth pinched to thin lines. Isabela’s mouth goes dry, and her heart pounds hard against her ribs. If they refuse her, she’s screwed. She fishes the vial of blood from the pouch at her waist, wrapping her hand around the faceted glass—it helps, creepy as it is, to have this small part of Hawke with her right now. “I have a favour to ask, of the magical sort,” she says in Rivaini, and the sound of her mother tongue in her own voice surprises her. Maker, she can’t even remember the last time she’s spoken it, but its lilting vowels claim their place in her mouth again almost too easily. “I’m looking for one of yours: my friend Hawke, who fought in Kirkwall for the mages. She was taken to be ransomed to the Chantry; I know she escaped, but not _where_. Tell me where to find her,” she continues, opening her hand to reveal the vial of blood, “and I swear you’ll never see me again.”

Her eyes find Badr as she speaks, defying him to oppose her, but he says nothing, his expression carefully blank. The others stare at her, eyes narrowed in suspicion, till finally the old seer speaks in a voice that cracks like dry leaves: “Well? Answer the girl.”

“Thank you,” Isabela says. The younger woman stretches out a resigned hand, and Isabela sets the vial in the hollow of her palm.

The air rouses with the faintest stirrings of magic, and the blood seems to wake inside the glass, casting a reddish glow over their faces before winking out again after a second or two. It leaves the night denser, somehow, like the moonlight was reluctant to reclaim its spot.

Her mouth twists, half-smile, half-grimace. “This is not mage blood,” she explains in the accent of the Bay, Antivan trills bleeding into the words. “Not even human blood.”

The words are like a physical blow. The woman hands her back the vial, but Isabela refuses to touch it, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “Then what the _fuck_ is it?”

The seer hobbles over to them, asks for the waxed seal to be uncorked, and dips one fingertip into its contents before pressing it to her tongue under Isabela’s stunned gaze. “Dragon blood,” she confirms with a papery laugh, blinking back tears like she’d just had a taste of Llomerryn red instead.

The surge of anger is such the world goes red again. “Dragon _what?_ ”

“There are stories of warriors who use it to augment their powers in battle,” the seer explains, corking the vial again. “I can tell you where this dragon was slain, but not where your friend is. I’m sorry.”

Isabela swivels to face the _Fury_ bobbing up and down among the ships anchored in the harbour. Part of her can’t fault Kasra for trying to keep herself and her crew alive—part of her even has to concede the feint is brilliant—but whatever sympathy she might’ve mustered stands no chance against the red-hot flare setting her blood aflame. Badr and the others are talking behind her, their voices a low gray buzz, the words washing over her like water. Her blood pounds dark and heavy as war drums in her ears, and the back of her mouth tastes like copper.

Oh, but Kasra’s going to _pay_.

Behind her, Badr’s voice resolves into her name. “Isabela,” he says, and by his tone she knows it’s not the first time. “We need to talk.”

Isabela turns to face him, but she can barely see him through the red haze still floating over her eyes. Even the balmy sea wind’s gone cold against the anger boiling under her skin, and it takes her every ounce of willpower not to start screaming. “Can you talk while you row?” she manages through clenched teeth, turning back to the four-masted barque where Kasra’s being held. “There’s someone I’d rather not keep waiting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I need a stiff one and a drink” is one of Isabela’s canonical lines when she tries to get out of visiting the Qunari compound, but I decided to use it here since it amuses me way too much. :D
> 
> Kudos and comments always welcome and appreciated! Come say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com)! <3


	13. Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke slowly starts getting used to her new circumstances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um. Hi. Apologies for another very late chapter—apparently everything has hit me harder than I thought, so I'm taking an extended break from writing. Updates will probably be sporadic for a little while, but I hope this chapter will be a fun read in the meantime! Thank you all so much for your patience, and enjoy this little breather! <3

It’s a wonder Hawke sleeps at all, knowing the tower is full of men ready to put her to the blade at the first misstep, but sleep she does, the Fade plucking her mind like a flower after she cries herself to exhaustion.

She has no idea how long she spends wandering the misty paths beyond the shirring swathes of the Veil. Magic may have healed her body, but she’s worked herself to her limits, and she only emerges from her slumber to force down some food and water, or relieve herself. The rest is nightmares, fierce and indifferent as the snowstorms of southern Ferelden: the dark swells of an infinite sea rolling all about her, patient shadows circling under the surface, Fenris’s hands melting to blood and bones and tracks of lyrium between her fingers—but the worst nightmare of all is that she’s still here when she wakes, in this Maker-forsaken tower.

Nothing good waits for her beyond the folding screens and curtains draped around her bed. Hawke has every intention of staying here, dipping in and out of her dreams, but the waking realm comes into sharp, screaming relief when sunlight floods the partitioned enclosure. The healer—Ziyanda, Hawke learned at some point—lets herself in, carrying a sea sponge and a ewer laden with water. The base thuds against the polished wood of the bedside table. “Can you wash up on your own, or do I have to do it for you?” she asks, fists on her hips.

“Leave me,” Hawke croaks, fingers pressed to her eyes.

“Not till you’re clean, one way or another.”

Vague memories rise up to the surface, of the bedridden weeks following her duel to the Arishok, of Orana’s infinite patience as she washed her broken body without complaint. Somehow the humiliation Hawke felt then still burns fierce through the cloudy waters of her memory. Apparently she still has enough pride left to force herself out of bed.

She manages to sit up, wincing at the dull pain throbbing inside her skull, then sniffs her armpit and grimaces at the rank smell of days-old sweat. “I suppose I could use a bath,” she concedes.

“I won’t argue with you on that,” Ziyanda says, a smile crinkling the dark skin around her eyes.

It takes Hawke a few tries to get her on her feet. Her head is spinning, her churning stomach empty but for thin porridge and leaves of embrium, but the queasiness is easier to bear on land than at sea. The wave of nausea recedes after a few steps; the movements help untangle the knots of her stiffened muscles, and the ache soon resolves into relief. The arched hallways of the tower are quiet but for the soft rustling of her slippers as she trudges along to the baths, Ziyanda’s grip firm around her arm.

The rest of the mages must be busy attending lectures or being brutalized by Templars, because she has the baths all to herself now: small pools of milky water, fragrant with halved citruses and sprigs of elfroot. A bright midmorning sun—is it ever _not_ sunny in Rivain?—slants through the thin brass slats of the latticed windows, curls through the swirls of rising steam, and glimmers on the surface of the bathwater. Hawke wonders if it’s engineering or magic supplying the water—or if recalcitrant mages are tasked with carrying buckets up the tower.

Once alone, she discards her stiff, yellowed shift, and steps into one of the baths. The water is just right, pleasantly warm even despite the Rivaini heat; some sort of spell is wrought into the water itself, woven delicate as lace. Not any magic she recognizes, not that she tries all that hard as she sinks shoulders-deep into the bath. The heat and elfroot seep into her sore limbs and loosen all the tension knotting her muscles. No sound breaks the silence, except the water lapping at the mosaicked edges of the bath, and seabirds squawking outside windows shaped like keyholes.

Hawke catches herself enjoying the moment, but her pleasure curdles with shame. She has no right to peace, fleeting though it is, not after everything she’s set into motion. _You’ve changed the fortunes of many, and not always for the best_ , Rosalba says again, dark eyes burning like coals inside her snarling face. Hawke sinks deeper, till the water makes her face an island, but the rushing noise filling her ears isn’t enough to drown out the memory of the seer’s voice. Rosalba was right. Hawke used to think she mattered, that she could make the world better somehow, but it bends and twists itself again as soon as she rights a wrong. Foolish of her to think she could make a difference. And oh, some difference she made: for Rosalba, for all the mages now paying for her mistakes, for her mother and sister and her father before them, and Fenris—Maker, _Fenris_ —

Hawke sobs, a wet squawking noise that bounces off the steaming surface of the bathwater, grotesquely loud in the quiet. She thought she’d already cried herself dry, but another sob wracks her, then another. There’s no one to hear her cry, not that she cares, so she lets the tears come, burning streaks down her temples to dissolve into the water.

It _hurts_. Maker, it hurts so much not to have Fenris at her side. There hasn’t been a day in three years when his voice wasn’t the last thing she heard before sleep and the first upon waking, not a night spent without their bodies curled around each other, breathing to the same slow, even rhythm. Even something as stupid as bathing feels wrong without the solid warmth of his chest against her shoulder blades, the smooth glide of his hands on the lines of her body, his eyes very green through clumped strands of silver hair, slippery kisses and spilled wine and sudsy water turned lukewarm as they make love, fingers and toes turned wrinkled as raisins. Three years, and Fenris the one constant no matter what part of the world showed outside their window—Fenris always the steadying force, her anchor and beacon both; now she drifts unmoored without even a star left to chart a course, like he plucked them all out of the night sky as he went.

Maybe it’d be easier if people left only the shape of their absence behind, but they take so much with them: each one stitched so intricately into the very weft of her heart their loss inevitably tears it inside out, frayed seams always a little more fragile.

Hawke shuts her eyes and lets herself slip beneath the surface. There she floats, nothing but sweet water cradling her on all sides, rushing into her mouth when she parts her lips. In thirty years she’s known sorrow enough for lifetimes; she used to think both flesh and soul were made stronger for the scars, but that too was foolish. There’s only so much one can bear before breaking under the strain, and there isn’t enough of her left unmended to carry more grief without shattering. If Fenris is gone— _truly_ gone—then she has nothing left, nothing except—

She folds her hands over her stomach, and for a moment there’s nothing except the faint taste of citrus and bruised elfroot on her tongue, and the soft pale glow filling her mind like morning light. She feels so insignificant, so fragile she could shed her skin and vanish into the faint ripples of gold webbing the surface, mindless as the sea foam crowning waves.

 _Fenris needs you_.

The words alight upon her mind, clear as day. Hawke sits up again, water sluicing down her hair and breasts, the puckered half of a citrus fruit brushing her bare arm as it bobs on the surface. The gentle, golden light is gone, but so is the leaden weight crushing her heart.

She knows what Fenris would have her do: keep her head down and keep herself safe till she can return to him. For a moment she draws out the memory of him from the snarl of her thoughts and drinks it in—the gold-flecked green of his eyes, the lyrium of his markings humming softly to her magic, the almost-smile slanting his lips as he whispers _I am yours_ into her ear—then gently tucks it into a secret nook of her mind. It will be there when she needs it, brilliant, beloved, sharper than any blade … but for now, she must play the docile mage.

Might as well be clean in the process.

Hawke sighs, and a lone bird answers with a slow, wistful note of its own. She examines the colourful soap bars and pots of coarse sea salt waiting in a neat row on the edge of the bath, finally choosing a soap with a honeyed rosewater scent. Then she scrubs her skin pink, washes the saltwater and sweat clumping her hair, and picks at the dried blood still crusting the underside of her fingernails till they’re clean. The slow swirls of steam pluck at the sunlight like harp strings, and seabirds wheel across the patch of sky in the window with the occasional white flash of wing.

The last of her tears trickle down her cheeks to drip into the bath, then Hawke gathers what’s left of her broken heart and readies herself to face the Circle of Dairsmuid.

* * *

Hawke’s assigned room faces west, halfway up the tower. It’s lightly furnished, with gauzy hangings providing some manner of privacy, and sitting cushions ringing a low table in the middle of the room. At least she won’t have to share it with any pimply youth half her age: the furniture has been recently dusted and the potted plants tumbling over the windowsill dutifully tended to, but the four beds show no sign of having been occupied in a while.

She’s been provided with a few clothes and basic toiletries. The trunk by what’s to be her bed holds three sets of robes, a couple of tunics, and a pair of pantaloons, all in airy, flowing fabric and vibrant shades she’d never choose for herself. Hawke finds herself missing her leathers and woolen skirts, but finally trades her dressing gown for the pantaloons and a tunic in hues of amethyst and saffron that do her pallor no favours. The drape settles nicely on her body, though, and the crepe swishes about her legs soft as a whisper when she makes her way to the window, pleating her damp hair into an Orlesian braid.

Below the gentle slope of the city, the Bay of Rialto glimmers cobalt and gold in the distance. Trails of white wake-water follow the graceful glide of ships, sails open like wings; cobbled streets curve between colourful awnings and adobe walls, festooned with leafy green vines. People walk to and fro in the draped clothes that seem to be in fashion in Rivain, skins shining bronze, ebony, and gold under the midday sun. A sheer drop separates her from them, dwarfing the flowering trees growing clustered within the walls raised around the tower. Maybe if she bound strips of bedsheets together like the heroines of her childhood books, but she’s no rogue, and no doubt the gates of the Circle are guarded, anyway. Too risky.

Someone knocks, and Hawke swivels to see Rivella standing in the doorway. “Good day,” the First Enchanter says with a casual cheer at odds with the steely woman Hawke remembers. “I trust Ziyanda has taken good care of you. How do you feel?”

“Never been better,” Hawke answers, more sardonic than she means.

No doubt Rivella picks up on her tone, but she chooses to let it slide. “Good,” she says as she steps into the room. A little girl is trailing after her shyly, elven ears sticking out from a mass of toffee-coloured hair. “I wanted you to meet Lathianni. She was our most recent arrival before you came along, and she would greatly benefit from the guidance of an experienced mage. I told her you two would become fast friends.”

 _Of course you did_ , Hawke thinks. No doubt Rivella means to keep her hands full after she nearly ripped the Knight-Commander’s face off—and no doubt Rivella knows she knows, their smiles equally frosty as they hold each other’s eyes.

But that’s not Lathianni’s fault, Hawke reminds herself, and the child shouldn’t have to suffer whatever game the First Enchanter is playing. “I’m sure we will,” she says, mustering her kindest smile and crouching to meet the girl’s eyes. “My name is Amabel.”

If the name means anything to Rivella, she shows no sign of it. She nods once, then gently nudges the tiny slip of an elf forward. A shy, gap-toothed smile dimples Lathianni’s full cheeks, and she rises large eyes of liquid violet at Hawke. “Your hair is pretty.”

“Why, thank you. Want me to do yours too?”

The child looks at Rivella, who smiles and nods magnanimously. “Of course. Get settled in and make yourselves pretty, then join us in the refectory downstairs. The midday meal will be served at first bells.”

At that she leaves, the locks gathered at the back of her head bouncing with her steps. Swallowing back her resentment, Hawke locates a brush and some hairpins in a drawer, then sits on a floor cushion. Lathianni is practically thrumming with excitement as she kneels straight-backed between Hawke’s knees, her small brown hands folded together primly in her lap. “So, how do you like it here, Lathi? And can I call you ‘Lathi’?”

The girl giggles and nods approvingly, then starts fingering one of the tassels hanging from her cushion. A little more coaxing and Lathianni is babbling about her favourite foods and Enchanters, the flowering trees in the gardens, the scary men in armour patrolling the tower. Hawke listens, interjecting with the appropriate noises as she runs the brush through Lathi’s silky hair. It has that softness only a child’s hair can, the bristles slipping through unhindered.

A strange sort of nostalgia imbues her movements as she braids sections of hair and pins them in a crown around Lathi’s head. Hawke’s taken to trimming Fenris’s hair whenever she catches him flipping it out of his eyes with a head toss, but she hasn’t braided anyone’s hair but her own since Kirkwall. She remembers late nights with Merrill and Isabela, hair escaping clumsy pleats and lopsided buns listing drunkenly, and long before that, she and Bethany doing each other’s hair in twists and braids, pretending they were princesses about to meet their destiny at some ball in Val-Royeaux.

Hawke blinks the haze out of her eyes, then clears her throat. “All done,” she announces, satisfied with her work. Too bad she doesn’t have ribbons to complete the look … though she spots the plants on the windowsill and helps herself to a cluster of small white flowers. “And now for the final touch.”

Lathi is admiring herself in the shining surface of the mirror, patting the golden wisps of hair haloing her head with careful fingers, and barely stays still long enough for Hawke to tuck the sprig of flowers into the braids. “Thank you,” she says with a smile that makes Hawke’s heart hurt, then takes her hand in hers.

“Come, let’s dazzle everyone,” Hawke says, and together they head down the sweeping coil of the staircase.

* * *

The rest of the tower is even more impressive than the baths. A domed roof hangs over the shaft of the tower; sunlight spills free from tall arched windows, and the vault is pitted with tiny honeycomb cells painted in patterns of blue, green, yellow, and purple. Head tossed back to admire the sight, Hawke suddenly feels as though she’s upside down, falling headlong into a wild profusion of flowers. She sits down hard on the first step and waits for the wrench of vertigo to pass, then makes sure to cling to the handrail till she and Lathi reach the bottom of the spiral staircase, hand in hand.

She sees her first Templars then, standing on either side of the double doors leading to the refectory. _Won’t catch me cowering_ , she wills herself, walking past them with her chin held up high, but her stomach rumbles loudly at the waft of spices and cooked meat, somewhat ruining the effect.

A din of conversation and clattering dishes welcome them inside the refectory. This is nothing like what Anders told her of Kinloch Hold, mystery stew and congealed meat gobbled down in silence under the glare of Templars. Here the mages talk animatedly as they eat, clustered in small groups around colourful dishes and sauces that echo the honeycombed vault of the tower. Intimidated despite herself, Hawke scans the refectory for a couple of free spots when a young woman waves her over.

“Welcome to Dairsmuid,” she says, then reaches across the table to pinch one of Lathi’s cheeks, earning herself a gleeful squeal. “Look at _you_. You look just like a princess.”

“Like you,” Lathi replies excitedly.

Hawke quirks a curious eyebrow as she settles on a sitting cushion. “Nice to meet you, your Highness?”

“Please don’t,” the woman laughs. “I’d be twenty-fourth in line of succession _if_ I weren’t a mage. Just call me Subira.”

“Amabel,” Hawke replies, returning the smile. She’s pretty sure she’s staring: Subira’s skin is as dark as Hawke is pale, and though what draws the eye first is the delicate chain linking her nose ring to her earlobe, her face is striking—soft eyes the colour of coins, a button nose, and a dark full mouth set like gemstones inside a perfect oval. Two small flowers are tattooed on her cheeks in pale, shimmering lavender, and a cloud of tight curls swells around her head to tumble down her shoulders.

Hawke has to force her gaze down. The table is laid out with shrimp skewers, chunks of meat cooked in thick, bright sauces, roasted vegetables, and piles of flat, buttery bread … though there’s no cutlery in sight.

“Oh, do you need a fork and knife?” Subira asks, as if on cue. Hawke’s likely not the first confused expatriate the Circle of Dairsmuid has welcomed within its sunlit halls. “I can get you some if you’d like.”

“Thank you, but I should manage,” Hawke replies. Lathi is already helping herself to a piece of bread, and Hawke imitates her, folding it around a slice of roasted eggplant and swirling it around the sauce. “When in Rivain, as they say.”

A genial smile bares Subira’s white teeth. “You are Marcher, right? How did you end up here?”

_Oh, you know. Got chased out of my home by rogue Templars, was abducted by the same pirates who left the love of my life for dead, then swam to shore to escape an abomination and ended up in the Circle because I panicked like the bloody idiot I am. Just another week in the life of the disgraced Champion of Kirkwall._

Can’t bloody well answer that, though, so Hawke chews on a bite of bread and eggplant to buy herself some time. “Fereldan, actually,” she finally answers. “I had to leave once the rebellion reached the south.”

Subira blinks. “I wasn’t aware Kinloch Hold rose up.”

 _Shit_. “You’re right. It didn’t.” Hawke tears off another piece of bread to give herself some countenance. “I was actually meant to transfer here, except the carriage was involved in an accident, and I was the sole survivor.”

“An accident?”

“Terrible, really. It involved a druffalo and a very steep hill, and I tried healing the Templars who were guarding me but—Maker keep them—it was already too late, so I figured I might as well come the rest of the way here. Honour their dying wish.”

Subira and Lathi are both staring at her with wide eyes and round mouths, so Hawke dips her piece of bread into thick red sauce, and shoves it whole into her mouth to forestall any questions. A grave mistake, it turns out: Subira is already pouring her a glass of minty water, and after a few seconds of grace the inside of Hawke’s mouth is suddenly coated with flame. Heat rushes to her face and tears blur her vision as she breaks into a coughing fit under Lathi’s wide-eyed gaze. “Andraste’s flaming knickers,” she chokes out after downing half the proffered glass. “This is potent,” she adds, cutting a wounded look at the dish.

Subira lets out a crystalline laugh, then winks. “For a Fereldan, maybe. Try this instead,” she says, pointing to a different dish before glancing at her through thick lashes. “You know what I think? I think you’ve never stepped foot in a Circle before.”

Hawke coughs some more, then swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand and tries a lopsided grin. “Be gentle, please. It’s my first time.”

At least she has the satisfaction of seeing Subira’s cheeks darkening. “I like you,” she replies, the words fluttering as she laughs. “Arrivals from beyond the Bay are usually … different.”

If the Gallows are anything to go by, Hawke knows exactly what she means. She remembers all too well the hollow stares, the hunched shoulders, the unnatural silence lying thick within the granite walls of the Gallows, broken by the occasional scream or sob. Most of the Kirkwall mages there would’ve been an odd sight in the refectory now, filled to bursting with midday light and laughter. “I admit this place isn’t quite what I expected, either,” she says, letting her gaze sweep the room.

“We’ve always done things a little differently here,” Subira replies, but a shadow flits through her amber eyes, like clouds scudding or tree branches swaying before the sun. “Things are changing now, though,” she finishes, her voice dropping to barely more than a whisper.

All the brightness around Hawke seems to rust at that. The light sours, turns everything sharp and menacing: the colours blaze danger red around her, and the clatter, the bright shards of conversation almost make her wince. Her heart hammers against her breastbone, and she wipes her palms on the legs of her pantaloons, fighting the urge to jump to her feet and make a scene, anything to disturb the blithe cheer around her. All these people, eating and chatting without a care in the world, completely oblivious to the war brewing within and without the pretty walls of their tower.

Boiling frogs, the lot of them, and it’s all her fault.

What little appetite Hawke had is gone now. She forces down a bite of stewed lamb, but it nearly catches in her throat, and her stomach roils in protest at the complicated tangle of spices and aromas. “I’m sorry,” she says with what’s probably more grimace than smile. “I think the heat is getting to me.”

“I’ll walk you back to your room,” Subira says. “The stockroom might have a thing or two to help settle your stomach.”

Hawke attempts to protest, but Subira is already on her feet. Lathi is all too eager to follow, so the three of them head back up the coil of stairs. Some of the other mages have already retired to their rooms or the gardens to wile away the hotter hours of the day, and the few Templars in attendance hardly seem to take notice of their presence. Hawke notes the pair of guards flanking the main gate—a horseshoe archway large enough to hold the thatched-roof cottage she and Fenris shared for too short a time in Ferelden. A wisp or some other spell might draw them away from their post long enough for her to sneak her way past, but if she fails to escape …

Tricking Templars was much less daunting when she had Fenris and the rest of her friends at her back, so she sets the thought aside as she follows Subira up the stairs. Instead, she takes note of the thick, forked boughs outside the window on the landing, leaf-shadows dappling the steps.

The stockroom is almost an indoors garden of its own. Plants tumble off the window ledge and hang from the ceiling beams, filtering the sunlight into long fingers of green and gold. Hawke sees scales, mortars and pestles, oil burners, sheaves of herbs, and potions of all sorts; puffs of cold white mist roll off crates enchanted with frost runes, and vials of lyrium glow within a glass case, the pale light casting strange, spindly shadows on the tiles at her feet. The room smells of cut grass and fresh flowers, and a slightly pungent, medicinal aroma, not altogether unpleasant.

A Tranquil woman is tending to the plants, pruning wilted leaves on a plant of royal elfroot. “Greetings,” she says, watching them with complacent eyes.

Sandy, braided forelocks frame the sunburst brand on her brow. She looks oddly familiar, Hawke thinks, and has to suppress a shudder when her pale eyes come to rest on her. If Subira is fazed in the least, though, she hides it well. “Hello, Elsa. Can you spare a bit of ginger root and embrium for my friend here?”

“Not without permission from a Senior Enchanter.”

“For _embrium?_ And ginger root, which I could just as well get from the larder? Aren’t the Seekers a bit overzealous?”

“I do not disagree with your assessment, but such are the new regulations,” Elsa states.

Her disinterested gaze remains fixed on Hawke as she speaks, and then it clicks. The blond hair, the narrow face, the stern voice: she was Meredith’s personal assistant in Kirkwall, sending Hawke off to do the Knight-Commander’s bidding and flouting her uncontested hold on the mages of the city. Hawke whirls around and crouches to face Lathi instead, her back to Elsa, and plasters a smile on her face despite her pulse running high in her throat. “Do you want a closer look at the flowers, love?” she asks in the sweetest voice she can muster.

Lathi nods enthusiastically, and Hawke lifts her up in her arms before pretending to admire the colourful clusters of flowers drooping from the hanging pots. Meanwhile, Subira is trying to bargain with Elsa: “Are you certain there weren’t a few embrium petals in today’s sweepings? Maybe a slice or two of ginger?”

Hawke sticks her nose into the heart of a pale blossom. “Mmm, these smell so good.”

Lathi sniffs, then frowns. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Oh.” Indeed, the flowers, pretty as they are, are odourless. “You’re the one who smells so good, then,” she says, planting a kiss on the girl’s soft brow. “Let’s try these instead.”

“There’s pollen on your nose,” Lathi laughs, and rubs the powder off the tip of Hawke’s nose.

The child still on her hip, Hawke navigates the shelves of potions and ingredients to put as much distance as possible between Elsa and herself, hoping the Tranquil won’t reveal her identity to Subira. She feigns to be absorbed by the fragrant blots of colour as the moments stretch to minutes, till finally Subira returns with a piece of ginger root in one hand and a stalk of embrium in the other. “Ta-dah,” she announces, grinning. “It should tide you over.”

“You did it,” Hawke blurts out, risking a glance above her shoulder as they leave the stockroom. Elsa is bent over her ledger, jotting something down. “You’re magic.”

Subira laughs. “I know. Come, I’ll make you that tea.”

The tea is as effective as it is pleasant, the spicy, almost lemony flavour of ginger and a trickle of honey masking the bitter taste of embrium. Relieved—for now—of the queasiness, Hawke naps while the rest of the mages attend their afternoon lectures, only leaving her room again for the evening meal.

By the time the sun sinks into the blazing waters of the Bay, she’s abed again, already starting to doze when Lathi’s big eyes appear at the edge of her bed. “Can I sleep with you tonight?” she asks in a small voice.

Hawke smiles. “Of course.” The mattress, suspended from four sturdy posts, sways as she helps the girl in bed with her, but once the two of them are settled under the brushed-cotton sheets, Lathi’s small body curled up against Hawke’s, it’s surprisingly comfortable. Hawke wraps an arm around Lathi’s small shoulders into a loose hold, and kisses the crown of her head as she would Bethany’s—or Carver’s, if he’d ever let her—back in Lothering.

Not a sound except the distant waves unfurling at the edge of the city and the sigh that escapes the girl, much too big for her tiny body. Hawke feels the Fade pulling gently at her mind again when Lathi’s small voice tugs her back to the waking realm. “Will they be here again tonight?”

Hawke has to stifle a yawn despite herself. “Who do you mean?” she asks, rubbing her eyes.

“The spirits. They say they can take me back to my mamae, but they’re scary. They’re _liars_.”

Hawke blinks at the Dalish word, and watches the stars piercing through the purpling mantle of the sky one by one. What did Father use to tell her? “They’re just jealous because they’re stuck beyond the Veil, while we mages can travel both sides at will. They will try to convince you to take them with you, but they can’t cross over unless you let them.”

“Some of them are really scary,” Lathi whispers.

“I know. But you can do whatever you want in your dreams. You can move places, you can fly—”

Lathi giggles. “You can’t _fly_.”

“No? Because I say you can. What’s your favourite place in the whole world?”

That gap-toothed grin stretches wide again, bright enough to rival the plump wedge of moon hanging low in the dimming light of dusk. “I like the woods best. I like the birds and animals and all the trees, like oaks, and maples, and cedars and birches and firs …”

“And chestnuts?” Hawke supplies when the girl trails off, grinning despite herself at the thought of a handful of steaming roasted chestnuts, soft under the tooth and sweet on the tongue. _Not bad_ , Fenris said the first time he tried them, that one perfect autumn they spent together in Ferelden, only to empty the pan practically by himself. Harder to keep thoughts of him at bay once the sun has set, once the night starts to deepen and embolden all manner of memories and secrets. Hawke can still see him, the arch of his eyebrow, the slant of his mouth as she wrestled him for that one last chestnut, only for them to stumble in a tangle of limbs on the hide in front of the fireplace. She remembers his surrender, his fingers lingering on her lips as he gently pushed the last bite of chestnut into her mouth, and she remembers the rest as if it were yesterday, hands and mouths and bodies moving together in the flickering heat of the flames.

Her throat closes up, the memory enough to draw tears from her eyes. Luckily, Lathi doesn’t seem to notice, having tapped into a fresh well of tree names. “Next time spirits bother you,” Hawke says once the child has exhausted her list again, “just think _really_ hard about those woods full of pretty maple trees and birches, and they won’t be able to follow you there. And I’ll be right here while you sleep.”

 _But not when you wake_ , she finishes silently. Lathi falls asleep before long, her soft head resting in the crook of her shoulder, but Hawke stays awake for a long time after the last strips of purple and blue have faded from the night sky and stars spin overhead in their stead, fearing what demons might tempt her with once the Fade has claimed her too.


	14. Fenris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris is slowly recovering from his wounds, and finding out more about his surroundings and the people who took him in. But some things don’t quite add up …

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Sorry for going so long without updates -- I have the next four chapters more or less ready, so I'm hoping that the next few updates will be more regular! And I haven’t forgotten about my boy Fenris, and we’ll see be seeing more of him from this point on. :D
> 
> Thank you very much for your patience, and I hope everyone is doing well! <3

“Fen,” Hawke says, her voice clear and true. “Come and see.”

His sleepy gaze slides in the direction of her voice and finds her sitting by the window of their cottage, her loose hair falling down her back. Tree leaves rustle green and gold on the other side of the glass panes, and a clear blue sky flits in and out of sight. It’s a dream, of course: Fenris lies reclined on the couch, the weight of a book on his stomach and one arm tucked under his head, and knows he has merely woken on the wrong side of the Veil. In reality, the cottage has been abandoned for weeks. He remembers the scuffed floorboards drenched in Templar blood, that sharp copper tang displacing all the other familiar smells of home, and wonders if anyone has found their bodies yet. The thought does not belong in this dream, however, so he nudges it away.

“Wake up, sleepyhead. We have a visitor.”

Fenris closes his eyes again. A dream, he knows, and he’s loath to disturb it, lest it crumble around him. “Who?” he asks, just to hear Hawke’s voice again.

“The Barlows’ druffalo calf. I think I shall name her”—she makes a pensive noise, and he can picture her tapping her chin with one slender finger—“ _Drusilla_.”

Dream or not, Fenris smiles despite himself. “Hawke, we are not keeping a druffalo.”

“Why not? She’s so small, I bet she’ll fit right at our feet next to Maker’s Bark.”

Maker’s Bark lets out an indignant huff from his spot on the hearth rug. “Just so,” Fenris agrees. “Before you even know it she will take up the whole bed.”

Hawke laughs, undeterred. “An acceptable trade-off for fresh milk and homemade cheese, no?”

He forces himself to lift his eyelids, heavy though they are. He sees her now, limned in sunlight. Her hair runs down her back like spilled ink, and the curve of one bare shoulder shines in a bright crescent where the loose collar of her dress has slipped. A strange sort of grief wells up inside him at the sight. He hasn’t seen her face in so long.

“Hawke,” he whispers, as though he might disturb the dream otherwise. “Look at me.”

“Hm?” she says distractedly. The druffalo calf outside has her full attention, and it takes her some effort to tear her gaze away. The line of her neck tenses as she starts to turn towards him, and he can see the round, sunlit curve of her cheek, the brush stroke of her lashes, the tip of her nose. Just a little more and he will see the blue of her eyes and the playful slant of her lips, but instead she gasps out loud and jumps to her feet. “Oh, don’t you dare eat my tomatoes, you little—”

And then she’s gone, hair and skirts trailing after her like the tail of a shooting star. Maker’s Bark heaves himself off the floor with a dramatic yawn; Fenris dog-ears his page out of habit before closing the book, then pulls himself to his feet. The dream is delicate as silk, and he is careful, careful not to snag it as he makes his way after Hawke. The cottage is just as he remembers it: neat, serried rows of second-hand volumes on one shelf, Hawke’s tomatoes ripening on the kitchen windowsill, their cloaks hanging side by side on their hooks by the door, hunter green and crimson. A bracing wind blows in from the open door.

He finds her crouched on the paving stones outside, laughing as the calf noses at her hands and pockets. Fenris expects the sprightly autumn scent of the Hinterlands, but the dream is already wearing off, the patina thinning to reveal the layer underneath. The bitter smell of the sea tickles his nose, twinned to the distant swell of strange voices, and the ground starts rolling under his feet.

He clutches the door jamb for support. “Hawke,” he calls out again.

He fears his voice might not reach her from the dream’s crumbling edge, but this time she turns to face him. The sun filters through her hair and fans out behind her head like a halo, turning stray strands to spun gold and casting her face in shadow. “I’m taking Drusilla back to the farm,” she says, snorting in mirth when the calf starts licking at her face. “Are you coming with? Maybe Seanna will set up the courses for us again if we get there early enough.”

Maker’s Bark pads up to the druffalo calf and sniffs at it curiously, earning himself an enthusiastic lick on the muzzle. “Play nice, children,” Hawke says, laughing as the calf kicks and leaps around her, then turns to look at Fenris over her shoulder. “Oh, will you bring me my cloak, please? I swear, ten years in the Free Marches and I can’t bear the slightest chill anymore.”

Fenris reaches for their cloaks, but finds nothing but two pale washes of colour instead of heathered wool. His heart pounds in his ears; the paving stones at his feet float on a sheet of light like fallen leaves on the surface of a pond, and a bout of vertigo makes his head spin. Even as the varnished wood of the door jamb starts to fade under his fingers, even as the distance between him and Hawke grows like shadows at dusk, he cannot bring himself to take that first step into emptiness.

“We have to hurry, Fen!” Hawke calls out, her steps light as she climbs into thin air. The light of the dying dream is eating away at her silhouette; he can no longer see Maker’s Bark and the calf, and the hills and sky at her back are burning away. He still cannot see her face when she turns, but he can read the grief etched on it all the same, and he stretches his hand out as if he could reach across worlds and touch her cheek.

Fenris lifts his foot.

“Too late,” Hawke sighs, and then Fenris wakes, and the gaping emptiness at his feet is real: he finds himself swaying over a railing of wood and rope, overlooking foliage so dense he cannot see the ground.

His heart leaps into his throat. He recoils away from the ledge so violently he nearly falls over, but someone grabs his arm just in time to steady him. “Careful! That’s a long way down.”

Fenris gapes at his interlocutor, a young man with tattoos patterning half of his dark, ruddy face, and a thick black braid running down his back. Fenris tugs his arm free from the man’s calloused grip, his head reeling to make sense of everything around him.

The heat, the jungle, the man before him, wearing the sort of inked patterns he’s only ever seen on the rebels of Seheron. The wooden balcony where they stand rings a round hut nestled in the fork of a large tree, bright cracks of sky running through the canopy. Insects are chirping all about him, and out of the corner of his eye he catches flashes of colour as birds dart to and fro.

He knows this place. The place of his birth, if indeed Danarius told him the truth all these years ago.

It takes Fenris a few tries to find his voice. “How did I—how did I end up here?”

“Uh, there’s a lift right here.” The man points, then scratches absentmindedly at one muscular shoulder. “Safer up here than on the ground. Well, as long as you don’t fall off,” he adds with an amused grin.

Fenris shakes his head, then winces as pain blooms behind his eyeballs, and the throbbing ache of his half-healed wounds rouses through his confusion, as if called to action by the headache. “No, I mean on Seheron,” he says, then looks at the other man. “This _is_ Seheron, isn’t it?”

“Mother _did_ mention you hit your head,” the Fog Warrior—what else could he be?—says with a chuckle, crossing his arms over his broad chest and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Name’s Rimak, by the way. Are you sure you should be out and about already? You took quite a beating out there.”

Fenris takes a breath to steady himself, then another, then allows himself to take in his surroundings. Through the dense, endless green of the jungle, he can see other huts sitting on the boughs of the nearby trees, bridged by wooden walkways. One gigantic tree seems to act as the nexus of this strange web, its enormous branches curled over the huts almost protectively. The village must be practically invisible from the jungle floor.

Unimportant. He remembers the woman from his dream, all light and silhouette, but her face still eludes him.

So does her name, he realizes.

“There … there is someone I need to get back to,” he says. At least of that he is certain.

“So you keep saying, but you’re no use to anyone if you’re dead,” Rimak replies, then stops swaying on his feet. “And you know, _maybe_ getting back to her isn’t the best idea. She’s almost gotten you killed twice now.”

“ _Twice_?”

“Well, all this, for one.” Rimak gestures meaningfully towards Fenris’s collection of stitches and poultices, then quirks his mouth into an apologetic smile. “And you said her name before almost flinging yourself off the balcony just now.”

Rimak knows. Rimak knows her name, and perhaps that is the worst thing of all. The unease swells into panic, filling his chest and turning his breathing to ragged bursts. “What was it?” Fenris asks, his voice barely more than a whisper. “What was her name?”

Rimak opens his mouth, but someone cuts him off before he gets the chance to answer.

“What are you doing out of bed?”

Nami, the healer, is marching in their direction, hands on her hips. Fenris’s ears warm at the perspective of an imminent dressing down, but Rimak winks at him with a conspiratorial smile. “Fenris said he was getting bored,” he tells Nami. “Thought I’d help him outside for a bit.”

“Oh, because that’s up to you now?” she retorts, smacking the meat of Rimak’s arm.

“ _Ow_ ,” Rimak says, pouting exaggeratedly and rubbing his arm. “Sorry, mother.”

Despite everything, Fenris has to bite the inside of his cheeks to keep himself from grinning. He sees Rimak’s resemblance with Nami now: the dark eyes in the wide, genial face, the reddish streaks in his braid when the light hits, the solid set of his body. The fact that Nami barely clears her son’s collarbone only makes the scene more amusing.

“Next time he gets bored, get Hakan to tell him some stories instead,” she retorts, then juts her chin in Fenris’s direction. “And back to bed with you.”

The last thing he wants is to go back to bed. “I feel fine, I assure you,” he replies. That earns him a dubious look from Nami, but her squared shoulders drop at that.

Rimak nods emphatically. “See? And since he’s already out and about, maybe he can have dinner with us.”

Dinner. As if on cue, Fenris’s stomach grumbles with all the ominousness of a looming thunderstorm, earning him twin expressions of startled amusement. Rimak was right: he’s no use to anyone dead, and days spent subsisting on broth and medicinal slurry have done him no favours. Might as well get some real food down before setting out on his own to—

To what? What did he mean to do?

But Rimak is now motioning at him to follow, and Fenris has no choice but to shake off the feeling that he’s forgotten something, something that mattered.

* * *

Dinner is an hours-long affair that stretches well into the night. Fenris’s plate never goes empty: as soon as he makes a dent in all the food, smoked fish, meat buns and plantain skewers pile up again. Sugarcane liquor flows, sweet and strong enough to make his eyes water, and Rimak keeps Fenris’s cup filled whenever Nami’s disapproving gaze strays. That enormous tree overhangs the proceedings, and whenever Fenris looks up at the darkened canopy, small eyes shine like jewels in the light of the bonfire burning below, winking in and out of view.

A young woman hauls herself next to him, straddling the giant, gnarled root where they sit. “Quite a tree, right?” she says, following his gaze upwards.

“Careful, Sisa’s about to pull the moves on you,” Rimak says around a mouthful of food.

Her mouth curls into a mischievous smile. A thin scar runs crosswise through her lips and pales as they stretch. “So what? I have eyes,” she retorts with a shrug, and the wooden beads tied into her wheat-coloured sheaf of hair clink together. “Didn’t know you had dibs.”

Fenris chokes on a bite of plantain, to Sisa’s obvious amusement; Rimak scoffs, but his already ruddy complexion has darkened to an almost crimson colour. “I don’t have _dibs_. Can we go back to talking about the tree now?”

“Right, then,” Sisa says, though the teasing smile has not left her lips. “We call it Hualcana. It means—”

The word rises unbidden to his lips. “ _Shield_ ,” Fenris blurts out.

He can feel them both on either side of him, staring at him in surprise. “You know the tongue of Seheron?” Sisa asks after a pause.

So he does, apparently. Whether his—admittedly limited—knowledge survived the ritual or was something he picked up when Danarius’s engagements took them to Seheron is not something he wishes to examine tonight, though.

Rimak smirks. “Looks like your attempt to show off backfired.”

Sisa gasps in mock insult, one hand pressed to her chest. “Me, show off? _Never_.”

Fenris lets his gaze slide upwards while the two Fog Warriors swap friendly insults. Not that he can see much in the dark except the lower boughs, awash in firelight. The thick umbrella of the canopy is so dense no light reaches the jungle floor around its roots even at midday, and rainwater still sluices down the lower leaves from the previous day’s shower. In the afternoon he spied colourful birds coming in and out of a hollow in the bark, and if he looked long enough without moving, twigs that revealed themselves to be insects.

It fascinates him, this tree. The memory of another sacred tree floats up to the surface at that, the cracked bark painted with swirls of white and red paint; wind chimes hung from the lower branches, spinning in a wind that always reeked of chokedamp, while candles, coppers and sheaves of dried flowers lay at its roots—

“Hey, want to trade?” Rimak asks, pointing to the fish sitting untouched on Fenris’s plate.

He makes no effort to hide his relief. “Please.”

Rimak scoops some rice and a couple of skewers onto his plate in exchange for the fish. Then a voice rends the night, and the clamour of laughter and conversation dies out at once. A Fog Dancer now stands by the bonfire, the white paint on his skin bathed in the flickering orange glow. When he starts to dance he looks just like another flame, curling and twisting in the night, the feathers crowning his head shivering with each of his steps. The words are not quite spoken and not quite sung; it is unlike anything Fenris has heard in Tevinter, yet there is something familiar, some sort of longing threaded through the rise and fall of the man’s deep, rich voice.

What little Fenris remembers of the tongue of Seheron is not enough for him to follow the story. Rimak leans to translate the tale in his ear, close enough Fenris can smell leather and earth and the light tinge of his sweat, while the heat of his breath curls against his ear:

_Once upon a time, the earth and sea were in love. No one could tell where one ended and the other began, till the sky, who was jealous, forced them apart. They could not bear it, however, so the sea took its tears and gave them to the earth, and through their child the fog they were united again._

_But the people who lived on the earth could not see anything through the fog. One hero named Yaku made the long ascent to the heavens where the ancient elves dwelled and earned their favour through trials. In return, they taught him the secret wisdom of sky and air, and upon his return, he managed to capture the fog in a bottle and bind it to his will._

_The fog begged for its freedom, and in exchange promised to return to aid Yaku whenever needed. And the ancient secret of the fog has been passed down to us ever since._

Fenris listens, as if in a trance. He can make out some patterns in the movements: a clenched fist for the hero, a hand splayed over the eyes for the fog, the headdress lifted with both hands for the heavens. Even the pain of his wounds seems far away now—between the wet heat of the jungle, Rimak’s gentle voice whispering in his ear, and the copious amounts of food in his belly, Fenris’s eyelids slide lower and lower, till his head drops to Rimak’s shoulder. “ _Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun_ ,” the Fog Dancer says, except that makes no sense, no sense at all, but the swirling sparks of the bonfire carry his tale high into the night sky, and Fenris forgets why that was. For a second he smells the sea, there then gone, like a whiff of perfume, a trail of rose oil faded from the air.

He barely recalls making his way back to the hut. Rimak follows him to man the lift, torch in hand, then hovers in the doorway, the flap of deerskin draped over one tattooed shoulder. No such thing as silence in the jungle: the night is replete with the shrill cries of insects and the now-distant timbre of the Fog Dancer’s voice, but the silence inside the pulsing circle of torchlight is wound tight. Then Rimak lifts one hand to brush the curve of Fenris’s cheek with the back of his knuckles, deliberate as a challenge.

Fenris turns away from his touch. Not that Rimak is not attractive, with his long, dark eyes and friendly mien, but guilt prickles at the back of his skull, for no reason he can name. “I apologize,” he stammers, letting his gaze wander to the shadows pooling on the other side of the hut. He recalls a silhouette, all in shadows and gold. “There is—someone I meant to find.”

To his credit, Rimak simply drops his hand back to his side, and the corners of his mouth twitch in a brief smile. “Then let me tell you another tale,” he says, and waits for Fenris to nod his permission before continuing: “There was a man who wished to have all his woes taken away, so he had a sorcerer put them away in a leather pouch. For a while he got to live without a care in the world, but out of guilt or curiosity or boredom, he opened the pouch again.

“Before long he returned to the sorcerer, who put his troubles away again. But the man ended up reopening the pouch every time, till the sorcerer finally refused to help him anymore, because the man was determined to find misery where there was none.”

“I understand,” Fenris manages, the roof of his mouth gone dry.

Rimak looks at him, his eyes opaque in the warm glow of the torchlight. “There’s a place for you here, if you want it,” he finally says, his voice very soft in the quiet of the hut.

And then Rimak leaves, fiery strands of torchlight seeping around the flap of hide swaying in his wake. Fenris waits till his eyes have grown accustomed to the obscurity, then strips down to his underclothes before lying down on the straw mat and pulling the thin linen sheet over his body. As exhausted as he was mere moments ago, sleep shows no sign of coming now. For a while he watches the strange, spinning shadows of the herb sheaves hanging from the conical roof and the smattering of stars visible through the smoke hole at the top of the hut.

The sound of flapping wings draws his attention to the window. A bird—some kind of raptor—has alighted on the sill to preen itself, silhouetted against the rustling leaves of that tree named Hualcana. Again, that feeling of something Fenris should remember but cannot: a crest, perhaps, or heraldry of some kind, two birds of prey with their wings elevated, blazoned to the vine-wreathed pillars of an estate; and inside, a bed of crimson damask threaded with gold where he lay once, twice, a hundred times and more, limbs tangled in someone’s embrace like those two birds on the crest—

With a high-pitched screech, the bird takes flight again and vanishes into the hot night of Seheron, like it was never there at all.


	15. Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After keeping a low profile and meeting some of her fellow mages, including seer-initiate Subira and orphan Lathianni, Hawke attempts to escape the Circle of Dairsmuid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter refers to events from the DA novel Asunder and contains pregnancy mentions.

Hawke fights off sleep till silence falls over the Circle tower, then for another hour after that. When all she hears is the light, even rhythm of Lathianni’s breathing twinned to the outside waves, only then does she allow herself to move. Whispering an apology, she pries the girl’s small arms from around herself, brushes a kiss on her soft brow, then somehow extracts herself from the bed without waking her. Lathi’s eyes rove under dark lids, lashes twitching on her round cheeks, and Hawke hopes she’s playing in her beloved woods, gathering pretty leaves and pine cones.

She changes clothes by moonlight, removing her shift to put on the crepe pantaloons and tunic again, then retrieves the plump pillowcase she hid under the bed. While the rest of the mages were attending their lectures and she, ostensibly resting, she rummaged through the cypress drawers to gather a few choice garments, a pair of slippers, and some pieces of flatbread wrapped in waxed paper. If she’s to return to Llomerryn, she needs coin, and a beaded sash or silken robe should earn her enough at the harbour market to buy her way onto a ship.

But first, she needs to get out of the room.

The pale, watery light of the lemon-shaped moon is not much, but it’s all Hawke needs to slip the hairpins she twisted into a lever and pick into the keyhole. One of those Seekers of Truth made the rounds at curfew, locking the door behind him after a cursory check on them. This, Lathi told her, is new, and something hot and bitter rises at the back of Hawke’s throat at the thought. An upset torch, an unexpected illness, a lecherous Templar—so many threats that leave the occupants vulnerable till their door is unlocked again, and Hawke suspects the Seekers of not giving a single shit.

 _Focus_ , she wills herself, listening for the click of the tiny little pins moving inside the lock. She’s never been one for stealth or subtlety—standing out in the exact way no mage should has always worked for her—but she’s picked up a few things from her more roguish friends over the years. Varric taught her how to pick locks when a thunderstorm left them stranded on Sundermount once and even he got tired of talking to pass the time. _Maybe you’ll have better luck charming it into unlocking itself_ , he teased her then. Hawke can still hear the open affection in his rough, warm voice, while Fenris and Anders wagered on whether she’d succeed with those clumsy fingers of hers, a rare, elusive moment of camaraderie between the two. Fenris won, she remembers; Fenris, who always thought her more capable than she believed, who flashed her one of his devastating smirks when she finally worked the padlock open, then wriggled his fingers in Anders’s direction and said, _Now pay up, mage_ —

The door lock clicks open, and a strange mix of relief and anticipation floods her chest. That was the easy part. Hawke peers into the keyhole, then presses one ear to the door, straining to listen past the rush of her own heartbeat. Nothing but the moonlit hallway as far as she can tell. No sound but the occasional caw of some night bird far away. She takes a deep breath to steady her heartbeat, throws one last glance at Lathi’s sleeping form, and opens the door.

The hallway is clear. Her sock-clad feet slide noiselessly as she makes her way towards the top of the spiral staircase, her pillowcase thrown over her shoulder like a thief in a picture book. At night, the Circle tower looks entirely different. Gone are all the bright, screaming colours. All that’s left now is a half-hearted glow the colour of bleached bone, shining in puddles at her feet. The fretwork on the windows carves strange shapes out of the moonlight; the balusters cast long shadows on the marble floor, and she finds herself unconsciously matching the length of her strides to them. More than once a gleam at the corner of her eye makes her glance over her shoulder, but there’s never anything except the moon hovering in one of the arched windows.

She reaches the top of the staircase without incident. From her vantage point she can see all the way down to the main floor, and all the way up to the domed vault, the mosaicked patterns now washed to shadows and pearlescent grays. There must be Templars on patrol somewhere, but for now all is quiet, and the hollow pillar of the tower is deserted.

No time to waste. She starts down the steps, one palm hovering over the handrail. The last thing she needs is to be found out because she slipped and hurtled down the unending coil of stairs.

Hawke makes it down one floor, then another. She hasn’t quite reached the next landing when the rhythmic thudding of armoured feet against stone trickles past the rush of blood banging in her ears. A wash of torchlight starts yellowing the marble floor below. She crouches reflexively, but she’s a sitting nug here on the moonlit staircase, and the footfalls are drawing nearer. No way the Templar won’t catch her scrambling back up the steps if she turns around. Only a short distance separates her from the large marble pillar on the landing, but any brusque movement might give her away—

 _To the Void with it_ , she decides. If she’s going to get caught, it won’t be while standing around.

She presses her pillow down onto the handrail, lifts her feet off the steps, and slides down the sloping curve of the staircase. Then she ducks behind the pillar, her heart caroming so hard inside her ribcage she can’t hear anything else. She expects shouts, the strange hush of Silence, a hand seizing her by the throat—but instead the metallic footsteps slowly wind their way around the pillar and start their ponderous ascent up the stairs. Hawke waits, the pillow clasped to her face to muffle her breathing, her shoulder blades pressed against the cold marble of the pillar.

The Templar stops halfway up to the next floor, his torch casting wild twitching shadows on the wall. Then he heaves a dramatic yawn and resumes his walk back up the stairs like a man condemned to death.

Three floors to go.

The footsteps have receded to the far edge of her hearing by the time Hawke can bring herself to continue her progress down the stairs. Her steps are jittery now, her breathing coming in short spurts, but the topmost branches of the trees outside the tower are now swaying in the windows, spindly shadows mirroring their movements at her feet. Two floors to go.

After what feels like ages, she reaches her destination: the second landing from the ground floor. A quick peek below ascertains the presence of two Templars guarding the main gate of the Circle tower. Neither of them seems particularly alert—or even _awake_ —but she can’t afford to slip up now, so close to freedom. Only a delicate wrought-iron lattice separates her from the tree outside the window. Boughs turned black in the night span the distance between the tower and the wall raised around it, waxy, silver leaves shivering in the balmy night breeze. As a child, she used to climb the trees from the orchard near Amaranthine where she was born, to hide from the twins or simply to steal the reddest, ripest apples from the topmost branches; she’s nowhere near that agile anymore, especially after a few months spent in lazy, idyllic bliss in the Fereldan countryside, but it’s not like she has any other choice. Beyond the wall, down the gently sloping streets of Dairsmuid, Hawke glimpses the harbour between the rustling branches, the ships and their masts etched black over the moonlit bay. Maker, she hopes Isabela chose to stay in Llomerryn.

No fear now, just a calm, keen sort of awareness. Her senses are sharper, somehow, the distant roar and scent of the sea magnified by yearning, and her pulse has settled into a slow pounding beat that thrums through her from breastbone to fingertips.

She only gets one shot at this.

Hawke drops her pillowcase in the shadows gathered at the junction of the wall and floor, then slips her fingers between the curlicues of the lattice. No wards, luckily. The rough metal is cool to the touch despite the unyielding Rivaini heat, and the gentle breeze skims along her knuckles. She reaches into the replenished pool of magic waiting latent beneath her heart, and starts spinning the airy strands of gold, spooling them as she would fire but more tightly than open flame. It’s hard work, requiring more concentration and finesse than her usual pyrotechnics, as Fenris would call them. The spell threatens to leap from her fingers any second, and by the time she starts threading the magic into the iron lattice, fat drops of sweat are rolling down her spine and temples.

But it works. The twists and curls of metal start to glow like a furnace, incandescent red spreading along the lattice. When the space between her fingers is bright with fiery iron, she starts to pull. The heat whips at her face, and a shimmering haze warps the lattice and tree branches outside, but soon the metal starts to groan as it gives way, little by little—

“Hello, Champion.”

A flurry of sparks rise in the night; the filaments of magic slip out of Hawke’s hold, and it’s all she can do to take her hands off the lattice before it burns _her_ instead. She whirls around to find the First Enchanter standing there on the stairs, a small, self-satisfied smile floating on her lips.

Anger flares inside her, as bright as the already cooling lattice. “You—” Hawke starts, but Rivella has already clasped her by the arm, her grip surprisingly strong, and grabs the pillowcase before dragging her up the stairs like a recalcitrant apprentice (which Hawke is, to be fair). She knows better than shouting or aiming her magic at the First Enchanter of the Circle of Dairsmuid, tempting as it is, so she stumbles after her and struggles wordlessly against her hold, till Rivella stuffs her into a nearby room and closes the door behind them.

Hawke stands still, fists clenched at her sides, her breathing hissing through flared nostrils while Rivella inspects the contents of the pillowcase. Hawke refuses to feel guilty: what they took from her is worth much more than Circle duds, and she won’t give Rivella the satisfaction of spying shame on her face. She holds the woman’s gaze steady, holding her neck proud and her chin high, like her mother showed her so long ago.

Rivella looks patently unimpressed. “Have a seat,” she says, motioning towards the desk.

“No.”

The First Enchanter gives a disinterested shrug. “Suit yourself.”

A flick of her wrist and all the candles light up atop their brass holders, illuminating the room with their little sputtering flames. Then Rivella sits at the desk with such authority this can only be her office. She produces a pipe from the fold of her robe’s collar, retrieves a box of tobacco from a drawer, and takes her sweet little time packing the bowl. If this is meant to subdue her into sitting down, Rivella’s out of luck. Instead Hawke ventures a few furtive glances around while Rivella’s tattooed hands work the pipe and tamper. A map of Rivain’s horn and the surrounding waters hangs behind the desk, routes of some kind traced in ink; the gilt titles on the rows of leather-bound volumes glint in the candlelight, while sundry magical artifacts fight for space on the remaining shelves: glass bottles and vials, crystal foci, rolls of vellum and parchment tucked into the few remaining nooks. If there’s any logic to the way everything is organized, it’s not readily apparent.

A magical spark lights the tobacco and momentarily turns Rivella’s face into an unearthly mask. “Interesting application of elemental magic back there,” she says, a conspiratorial smile playing on her lips. “Heat without flame—few apostates demonstrate the requisite control to achieve that.”

Rivella’s going to have to work a lot harder than this to get Hawke on her side. “How did you know?” she asks once she’s unclenched her jaw enough to form the words.

“I expected no less from the Champion of Kirkwall, so I had my little friend here keep an eye on you.” As she speaks, Rivella swirls one hand through the thin plumes of smoke rising from her pipe, and a spirit orb, a barely sentient wisp of light, forms in the cup of her palm. It skims along her knuckles, its otherworldly glow flitting through the candlelight as it floats upwards, then returns to the Fade in a milky, lambent trail. Hawke sighs, remembering the strange gleam she spotted out of the corner of her eye and dismissed as tricks of moonlight. “With your phylactery in the vault, you know the Seekers would’ve tracked you down.”

Hawke bristles. _And whose fault is that?_ she almost says, but instead she settles on, “And by then I’d have been ready to face them. What’s your point?”

Evidently, that pinches a nerve. The woman’s face hardens, and something as sharp as a bared blade flashes through her darkened, gray-green eyes. “ _We_ wouldn’t be. You leave, they will take it out on the rest of us. Like it or not, you’re one of us now.”

“I’m nothing like you,” Hawke retorts, throwing the words between them like a barrier. “If you people have learned to live with the Chantry dictating when you can use the latrines, then more power to you, but that doesn’t mean _I_ have to.”

Bitter smoke escapes Rivella’s mouth along with an equally bitter laugh. “You really think we _want_ this,” she says. It’s not a question. Her voice is barely more than a whisper, but it’s velvet over steel, and her eyes are hard as obsidian in the dim room, narrowed to thin dark slits. “What happened, Champion? Once you fought for the mages of Kirkwall. Once you did what was right. Where is that woman now?”

Hawke’s cheeks flame. “Oh, is that what this is all about? You want me to free your bloody Circle? You’re looking for Anders, then. _He’s_ the liberator, not I.”

“I’m well aware, and no, I’m asking no such thing,” Rivella says, then returns to puffing on her pipe with deliberate, infuriating calm, blowing soft, pale rings of smoke to the ceiling. Hawke is certain she’s only doing it to make her lose her temper.

It works.

She slams her hands down onto the surface of the desk. Rivella doesn’t give her the satisfaction of being startled, though. “Then what the hell do you want from me? Revenge too, is that it? You wouldn’t be the first. ‘Let’s put the Champion of Kirkwall back in her place for ruining everything for the rest of us,’” Hawke mocks, and she doesn’t miss the way one groomed eyebrow rises on Rivella’s bronze forehead. “Or do you intend to use me as a bargaining chip in order to win the Seekers’ favour? I’ve paid for the title of Champion with everything I hold dear, First Enchanter, and trust me, if I’d known, I’d have let the Gallows burn to the ground. _Fuck_.”

A tear falls off her lashes to land on the back of her splayed hand, shortly followed by another. Hawke doesn’t have the energy to feel embarrassed; she watches them as she might watch rainwater sluicing down glass panes in the fall, cold and remote. Under her hands, the shivering candlelight reveals accumulated years of scuffs and scratches on the gleaming surface of the desk.

“Sit down, please,” Rivella says again, but this time her voice has lost its authoritative edge. Hawke obeys, swiping angrily at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Of all the things I’ve done for revenge, this wasn’t one of them.” The shredded tobacco glows orange as Rivella pulls on her pipe. “Let’s give this another try, shall we? Will you tell me how you ended up in Dairsmuid?” she asks in a cloud of smoke.

Hawke tries to think of a reason—any reason—not to tell her, but comes up with nothing. So she does: she tries to keep her story as concise as she can, but soon the words are crowding her mouth, unable to keep up with the flood of emotions and memories filling her chest. She tells her about the rogue Templars in Ferelden, about Llomerryn, about Rosalba and the hideous spell wrought by her hand; about Fenris falling in battle to protect her, the endless hours spent in the reeking hold of the _Fury_ , the carnage that broke out on the deck, about the dark strip of Dairsmuid’s silhouette on the horizon and the slow ascent of the sun as Hawke swam towards its light.

When at last she’s done, slightly out of breath, fresh tears streaming down her face, the tobacco in Rivella’s pipe has burned itself out and pools of melted wax gleam around the untrimmed wicks of the candles.

The First Enchanter is quiet for a long time; not a sound except the ancient echoes of the spire and Hawke’s own sniffles, as much as she tries to muffle them. “You were a convenient target,” Rivella says at last.

“Well, that sure makes me feel better,” Hawke mutters, but it’s a token effort, without any real heat.

“We have a saying here in Rivain,” she says, ignoring the riposte. “ _Coin and pain are for sharing_. It’s only human to want to share our pain with others, but some choose to inflict it upon others instead.”

“I doubt Rosalba was looking for a shoulder to cry on when she cast a compulsion spell on me,” Hawke retorts, earning herself a placating gesture.

“It doesn’t excuse what she did. I wish her story was unique, but many of us know that pain,” Rivella says, and the laugh lines at one corner of her mouth give a sobering twitch. Hawke has lost enough to know grief when it stares her in the face. The weight of it makes her hang her head, like the collective grief of a country, or indeed of all mages was staring out at her from that shadowed gaze. “How much do you know about what happened at the White Spire?” the First Enchanter continues after a moment, her voice admirably composed.

Another massacre, Hawke knows this much, but the few rumours that trickled out of Val Royeaux to southern Ferelden were confused, contradictory, and she felt little inclination to investigate. “Twenty says it involved blood magic,” she says with a shrug, but the lingering thickness of her voice undermines her attempt at levity.

This draws a brief—seemingly genuine—smile out of Rivella. “You’d think so, considering the Seekers’ response. But no: the First Enchanters had been granted permission by the Divine to hold conclave regarding the findings of a mage who unwittingly reversed his own Tranquility while researching the Rite.”

The words feel like ice, cold tendrils spreading all the way to her extremities and numbing her to the marrow of her bones. “I’m sorry, I thought I heard you say the Rite of Tranquility can be _reversed_.”

“Should we manage to replicate the circumstances of Pharamond’s research, then it appears so.”

Hawke has seen the sunburst brand more often in dream than in reality, always rousing herself a split second before the incandescent lyrium was pressed to her brow. She thinks of what the Tranquil mages of the Gallows were made to endure at the hands of the Templars, and the implications nearly turn her stomach. Can a mind ever be made whole again after this? Can one survive the flood of returning emotions after they’ve been dammed for years?

A nightmare any way she looks at it. She thinks of Elsa in her lonely stockroom, doomed to serve anywhere she goes, and presses one clenched fist to her mouth lest she start screaming. The mages of Dairsmuid, the Tranquil, Rosalba—now that her luck has run out, Hawke can’t ignore anymore how thin, how fragile the membrane is that separates her from them. It could be her, pruning wilted leaves without complaint; it could be her, collapsed like a dead star, turned into a conduit for grief and rage. But somewhere along the line it became easier to regard them with pity, if not contempt, because otherwise their pain was more than she could bear, coward that she is.

When Hawke doesn’t say more, Rivella continues: “Grand Enchanter Fiona took the opportunity to call for a vote to separate the Circle of Magi from the Chantry, which went over as well as you’d expect. The First Enchanters present were either slain or imprisoned on Lord Seeker Lambert’s orders, though those held captive managed to escape afterward under _mysterious circumstances_.”

From her tone, Hawke gathers those circumstances were anything but mysterious. “Were you among those, then?” she asks, curious despite herself.

“No, I and three others from the remotest Circles couldn’t make it to the conclave in time. That I wasn’t directly involved is what earned us the Lord Seeker’s _generosity_ ,” Rivella says, and the dripping disdain in her voice says exactly what she thinks of it. “He is merely ‘investigating’ our Circle, though clearly its handling has not been up to his standards.”

Hawke considers her for a moment. If she’s learned anything during her brief time in the Circle, it’s that the woman in charge of it does nothing without motive. “Why are you telling me all this, First Enchanter? Are you taking me into your confidence so I won’t attempt to escape again?”

A terse smile thins Rivella’s mouth. “Let me be very clear, Champion: there is no leaving this place, not while the Seekers are here. Not without the rest of us taking the fall for you.”

“What do you suggest, then? Waiting around like chickens when you bloody well know the fox is already in the coop?”

“I’m asking you to wait until I can see us all to safety. I’m asking you to _trust_ me, and in exchange, I will help you find your man.”

 _Fenris_. Hawke shuts her eyes, but she still sees him there, his eyes green like summer grass after the rain, the silver lines of lyrium on his fingers humming to her magic. “I swear if you’re lying—”

“I am not. Trust me, I am well aware you wish for nothing more than to return to the father of your child, even though in your condition you might very well be safer here than outside,” Rivella says, then gives Hawke a mild look. “You _are_ with child, aren’t you?”

They were careful. They never spoke of children, but it went without saying children would have no place in the kind of life she and Fenris lead, so every morning she stirred witherstalk into her tea, along with a generous dollop of honey to sweeten its bitter taste. The fresh sap is harder to come by in Ferelden’s cold clime than in the Free Marches, but she was always able to procure the long sharp stalks in Redcliffe. Maybe the early frost affected the harvest, maybe—

Well, it doesn’t matter. She noticed the change in her body back in Ferelden, but there just had been no good moment to tell Fenris, not with the Templars forcing them out of their home, not with all that already rested upon his shoulders. Besides, she knew (hoped?) the seed that took root inside her might simply flush itself out, but three moons have waxed and waned since, and that tiny wisp of life yet grows.

When they’d have someplace to call home again, she’d tell him, she promised herself, and till then she locked the thought away, and tried to will away the slight swell of her belly.

Hawke lets her gaze and shoulders drop. “Yes,” she answers through the tightness of her throat.

Maker, if only she’d _told_ him. Fenris didn’t abandon her when she sided against Knight-Commander Meredith back in Kirkwall, and he wouldn’t abandon her while she carried his child, she knows this much. But she kept it a secret all the same, too scared of turning the strange insubstantiality of it into something solid, something _real_. If Fenris had known, though, they’d be together still, sleeping in their dockside room on Llomerryn, their hound curled up at their feet and their unborn child growing between them.

A baby. A tiny, pudgy, squalling thing she’d probably drop, knowing herself. It’s almost funny, picturing Fenris cooing at an infant, except it’s not because he’s not here and she needs him more than ever, and maybe he’s dying or dead already and this child is the last thing he’s given her.

She drops her face in her hands and heaves a long, stuttering breath. “I can’t—I can’t do this without him, Rivella,” she says between her fingers.

“And you will not have to,” Rivella answers, and her voice is gentle, gentler than Hawke ever thought possible from that woman. She badly wants to believe her. “For both your sakes, however, I suggest you get some rest. The night will be short.”

It hits her then, how exhausted she is. Between all the confessions and revelations, the lack of sleep, her condition and all the discomfort it entails, Hawke is as frayed and worn out as an old dishrag, and a headache now throbs between her temples.

It’s all she can do to follow Rivella out of her office and up the gleaming coil of stairs. Behind the fretwork of the windows, the barest light of morn has begun diluting the inky night sky with hazy strips of blue and lavender, and Hawke wonders if Fenris is alive to watch the same sky.


	16. Isabela

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabela searched high and low for a mage in hopes they’d help her track Hawke down; her quest led her to a secret mage underground meeting, where she met Knight-Commander Badr. Although the vial of blood she obtained from Kasra turned out not to contain Hawke’s blood, maybe the Knight-Commander can still help Isabela—if Kasra doesn’t get in the way first.

Got to give it to Badr and the mages, they get Isabela to the _Pearl Oyster_ in record time. A snap of the fingers, and a gust of magical wind fills the sails of the fishing boat, sending it scything across the waters of the harbour. _Really ought to get myself one of those_ , she thinks, watching the canvas sheets of the single mast billowing with magic, but as the tall painted hull of her ship grows bigger, so does the unease twisting her gut. No one standing watch on deck that she can see; none of the revelry she’d usually expect, even this late.

The fishing boat slides up to the _Oyster_ in a smooth arc, then stops as the sails empty again. The anchor has barely dropped that she’s scrambling up the rope ladder, absently noting that the hull is due for a good careening. Her heart slams against her ribcage, and not only because of the effort. Isabela doesn’t need spirits to tell her something’s wrong, just that seething silence lying thick over her ship.

Pirates are never this quiet, _especially_ not in the middle of the night.

She slips through the hatch of the companionway, silent as a mouser, but to her dismay Badr follows her, nowhere near as quiet. “Let me go first,” he says when she turns to glare at him, but she ignores him and instinctively makes her way towards the hold, where Kasra and her crew should be—though Isabela’s not counting on it now.

Pained moans reach her ears before long and lead her to one of her men, propped up against a bulkhead and purple with fresh bruises. “Cap’n,” he says through swollen lips, dropping his blade when she steps into the sputtering halo of his lantern. One of the seers has followed them aboard—so much for stealth—and sets herself to the task of healing him. “Adaar escaped with her crew and made for the city,” he continues, welcoming the sparks of healing magic.

A dry, ugly laugh escapes Isabela’s throat. “Of course she did.” At this point, she’d be more surprised if things _didn’t_ go tits up at every turn.

She pointedly ignores Badr as she makes for the hatch, but his hand closes around her shoulder. “Captain, please,” he says. “We have to talk.”

Her eyes ricochet from his hand back to his face. He takes his hand off like he’d been burned, lifting his palm in a placating gesture. “Help me find the oxwoman and then we’ll talk,” she answers as she starts climbing the ladder. “I’ll even pretend to be interested.”

Lucky for her, a wounded Qunari woman on the run isn’t very hard to track down, even in a city like Dairsmuid. Most passersby Isabela runs into have noticed Kasra, and they’re all too eager to volunteer everything they know if that will rid them of the wild-eyed, dagger-wielding pirate. Fresh blood shines black on the moonlit cobblestones as she follows Kasra’s winding trail around the waterfront. The salt-scented warmth of the night slips past her as she runs, and when the sounds of a commotion from inside a nearby tavern reach her ears, she knows she’s found her target.

Isabela kicks the door down. A startled silence welcomes her as she storms in. The sight of the interrupted tavern brawl is almost comical, fists and swords hovering half-swing in midair while the innkeeper hides behind the bar, eyes wide above the slab of polished wood.

Kasra’s standing there in the middle of the room, seemingly unbothered by the two grown men trying to subdue her. A thin trickle of blood runs down the side of her scowling face, and the braid falling down her broad, muscular back is a disheveled mess of white hair. Shards of glass crunch under the heel of Isabela’s boot as she marches towards Kasra, hands clenched tight around the carved grips of her daggers. They might as well have jumped out of their sheaths on their own; she doesn’t even remember pulling them free, but now they sing, eager to jump into the fray.

Kasra tugs herself free from the two men’s grip as Isabela draws closer. Torchlight dances on the black of her eyes, and the ornate bands of gold decorating her horns blaze in the dim shivering light.

“Those horns of yours will look really nice mounted on the wall of my cabin,” Isabela says.

If Kasra’s intimidated, it doesn’t show in the least. “Would you believe me if I said I’m sorry? You left me no other choice.”

Isabela scoffs. “ _You_ left me no choice when you took Hawke and left Fenris for dead. And now you want me to just, what, forgive you? Turn the page, clean slate, pretend none of this happened?”

She says it with as much contempt as she can muster, but Maker help her, the thought’s almost tempting. Two days since she’s last slept more than a few stolen minutes at a time. Every careworn hour spent scrambling to find Hawke is now weighing her down, sure as an anchor tied to her feet. For a moment she glimpses the same fatigue in Kasra’s eyes; the tension in the tavern goes slack, and Isabela thinks they might sheathe their weapons instead of fighting again.

But if they have anything in common, it’s their thrice-damned pride. The air snaps taut again, and the moment’s gone, scattered like the foamy crest of a whitecap.

“You’d have done the exact same thing to save yourself and your crew,” Kasra says, the line of her jaw hard.

“Lie to save my crew? Sure. Sell people to the Chantry?” Isabela shakes her head and clicks her tongue in disapproval. “Thought you were above glorified slavery, Adaar.”

That hits home. Kasra’s nostrils flare; her mouth puckers, and her jaw works under the metallic sheen of her skin. “As if you’d never dealt in flesh yourself.”

A flash of indignant pride burns Isabela up from the inside out, and her vision pulses red. Her hands slam the underside of the nearest table, and the whole thing topples over, sending pirates scurrying out of the way as water pipes and wine bottles crash to the floor.

All hell breaks loose.

A score of blades are thrust to the ceiling, flashing all at once in the wavering torchlight. Isabela throws one of her daggers, but it just misses Kasra as she vaults over the upturned table and charges like a ram. Isabela slams back on top of a table, the air rushing out of her lungs. Shards of something pierce her bared shoulder blade; tears rush to her eyes, but even through the blur she spots the bottle rolling towards the edge. Her hand closes around the neck. She swings it in a wide, blind arc, and it explodes in a shower of glass and wine. Odds are Kasra’s horns took the brunt of the blow, but her opponent’s startled gasp is enough for Isabela to push herself free.

She fights with two days’ worth of pent-up rage, clamouring to be freed through fists and feet. Somewhere, a voice is pleading for everyone to please stop fighting, and Isabela laughs despite herself, bordering on hysterical. All about her is a deafening storm of steel and flesh. She tastes blood through the wine dripping down her face, but she feels no pain, so she kicks and punches and bites, not caring whose skin tears under her fingernails, whose flesh bruises under her knuckles. Kasra’s vanished somewhere in the writhing mass of bodies, but Isabela’s past caring, as long as somebody’s _hurting_.

An acrid smell tickles her nostrils. Flames leap from a smashed lantern to project the fight against the wall in crazed silhouettes. Someone goes down with a grunt. Pieron smashes a chair on another pirate’s back. Loquita dances from table to table, her foot connecting with unsuspecting chins and temples in high effortless kicks. The smoke stings Isabela’s eyes—or perhaps it’s tears—and she tastes salt and iron on her lips, but it’s not enough: she wants bones breaking under her blows and blood spraying in her mouth, she wants—

The little hairs on the nape of her neck rise. _Magic_ , her brain supplies before the spell sweeps her through the air like a feather. The tavern spins around her in a fiery whirl, and she lands in a cursing pile of pirates. Someone’s elbow is digging into her asscheck, and the sole of her boot is stamped across Pieron’s face. When she can finally tell floor from ceiling, Isabela tries to extract herself from the tangle of bodies, but an unnatural force is keeping them all pinned down into place. Another spell, and the flames still tonguing their way up the wall are doused.

Someone clears their throat, and Isabela catches a glimpse of Badr between the limbs thrown pell-mell over her. A pulsing glow emanates from the hand of the mage standing beside him. “Now, are you all ready to play nice?” Badr says with faint amusement. “Otherwise you can all stay stuck to the floor for an hour or two.”

_Fuck off, Templar_ , Isabela tries to say, except the spell has turned her tongue into a useless slab in her mouth, and all she manages instead is a mumble and some drool.

She catches Kasra’s gaze in the crowd, the thin yellow rings of her eyes blazing furiously. Evidently she’d kick Isabela’s ass if she was in any position to do so, but instead she’s stuck to the floor, too, trying to spit out a hank of someone else’s hair.

Isabela snorts despite herself, too bloody tired to hold on to her rage as the bloodlust dissolves like salt in water. No telling if the spell is at cause—the thought should make her angry but doesn’t—so she simply watches as the tension bleeds out of Kasra too. The force of the spell lessens little by little, and pirates and patrons alike reclaim their limbs from the tangle of bodies and broken table legs on the floor. Isabela earns herself a few curses as she staggers to her feet, inadvertently crushing an unsuspecting hand here and there. She wipes the blood and wine off her face, then winces as she stretches and rolls her shoulders experimentally. The aftereffects of the spell have left her body feeling strangely dislocated, and she doubts she has a single square inch of skin left unbruised.

The mage makes her way to some poor sod who got himself stabbed during the fight, while Badr walks up to Isabela instead. “Do I have your attention now?” he asks.

He’s earned it, she supposes. “Make it quick. I’ve got some matters to settle with her,” she answers, nodding in Kasra’s direction.

Across the room, Kasra is picking shards of broken glass out of her hair, the silver strands dyed crimson with wine. They watch each other for a moment, obviously expecting the other to make a move, but as people around them get to their feet and inventory their wounds, they come to an unspoken truce instead.

Isabela’s only half-listening to Badr. “I think I know what this is about,” he says, “but at least she took you to your friend all the same.” _That_ gets her attention. She narrows her eyes at him while the bastard pauses for effect. “I know where Hawke is.”

When she finds her voice again in the lingering shreds of magic, it comes out a high-pitched squawk. “Then why the _fuck_ didn’t you just say so?”

* * *

Isabela drops her face into her hands, and her hair slips from behind her ears to fall like curtains. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she mutters into her palms.

“I have it on good authority that I’m not the joking type,” Badr replies, and Isabela would point out the obvious contradiction if her brain wasn’t swimming.

Hawke, in the Circle. And not just any Circle: the Circle of Dairsmuid, where not too long ago mages walked free. The Maker has a sense of humour, and a shitty one at that.

Badr doesn’t say anything, letting her turn the situation around to view all of its angles, like she might examine a gemstone in the light. They’re back on the water now, in her cabin on the _Pearl Oyster_. They didn’t linger in the tavern, taking their leave after Badr paid off the innkeeper. Kasra and her men are on the main deck, their wounds being tended to by the seers; a truce was declared between both crews, though Isabela warned her men not to drop their guard this time. They better not.

She peers at Badr through the crevices of her interlaced fingers. “Are you sure it’s even her? It could be anyone.”

“The seers of the tower have confirmed her identity, yes,” he answers between sips of the rum she poured him. “And her behaviour certainly matches all accounts I’ve heard of the Champion.” At that, he gestures towards the lightning scars running down the side of his face in almost delicate, eerie patterns.

_That’s my girl_ , Isabela thinks, hiding her smile behind her fingers. She reaches for her own glass and takes a slug of rum. “What are they planning to do? She’s the bloody Champion of Kirkwall,” she says. Scorching tendrils spread from her belly to the rest of her, but even the rum and the ship’s gentle sway fail to dislodge the tension from her muscles. “Even Knight-Commander Meredith didn’t dare lock her up, and she was dying to do so.”

There’d have been a reckoning had Meredith tried to put the Champion behind bars, so they laughed it off, mocked Meredith’s puckered mouth, but Isabela remembers the fear pulsing gray and dull at the back of her mind, that one day she’d learn Hawke had been taken to the Gallows after all, imprisoned with the rest of the mages she sought to defend.

What a bloody joke.

“The Seekers of Truth are investigating the Circle of Dairsmuid, but it appears they’ve also been looking for her,” Badr is saying while Isabela brings the glass to her lips to give herself some composure. “In my opinion, her anonymity is what’s keeping her alive right now.”

You’d think she couldn’t feel lower after crashing down from the high of battle, and yet. “So they mean to kill her,” Isabela says flatly.

“That or Tranquility would be my guess, not that I’m privy to the Lord Seeker’s plans,” he answers, and Isabela locks her jaw to suppress the shudder uncoiling at the base of her spine. “The Seekers are beholden to no one but themselves. Making an example out of her would certainly be in line with their methods.”

None of this would’ve happened had she refused to dock in Llomerryn. Shouldn’t have let Fenris talk her into this nonsense with his damned puppy eyes. Isabela throws back the rest of her rum. “Tell me how to get her out of there,” she says over the clang of her glass against the surface of the desk.

Badr runs his tongue over his teeth, and she knows she’s not going to like whatever he’s about to say. “A mage goes missing, the Seekers will notice and take it out on the rest of the Circle.”

“The mage underground did it in Kirkwall,” she retorts, holding his gaze like a challenge. “If they were able to break mages out of the bloody _Gallows_ , of all places, then there’s no reason it can’t be done here.”

“And that is what we want to accomplish. Break _all_ mages out of the Circle. Either no one leaves the tower, or all do. And we only get one shot at this.”

Isabela stares at him, then shakes her head and chuckles despite herself. “You’re a very bad Templar, you know that?”

Badr laughs under his breath, his teeth very white against his dark lips. “My grandmother, my mother, my sister—all were mages. I could just as easily have been one too, but unless I’m a very late bloomer, the Maker didn’t see fit to grant me the gift,” he adds, drawing another chuckle out of her. “I joined the Order when I was eighteen, because I wanted to protect the mages, guard their artifacts, and witness the wonder of magic day after day. Unfortunately, that is not how the Seekers see it,” he finishes, his gaze darkening.

Of course Dairsmuid has to have its cake and eat it too: worship the seers _and_ the Maker in some idiosyncratic quirk that makes even less sense than these two things on their own. Isabela leans back into her chair and folds her arms over her chest. “Now that’s all very touching, but if you expect me to stay put while Hawke’s stuck in the tower, try again.”

“Not quite.” He reaches for the bottle and pours her another knuckle of rum, and she could swear he’s trying not to smile. “You managed to track us down, and I’ve seen you fight just now. You might be just who we’re looking for to pull this off.”

Oh, _balls_. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a _pirate_.”

“And yet you fought for the mages of Kirkwall, did you not?”

Isabela shakes her head vehemently. No, _that_ was Hawke. Couldn’t ever tell the little minx no, so Isabela just got roped into all of her nonsense as usual, fighting for mages and slaves and Maker knows who else because—

_it was the right thing to do_

—because that’s what _Hawke_ does, fighting for everyone whether they deserve it or not, Isabela least of all. Her pulse has gone hard, and she has to fight the urge to start pacing around the cabin. “I fought for _Hawke_ , not for the mages,” she finally says.

“Then fight for Hawke,” Badr answers, and the first light of dawn streaks the rum in his glass gold and amber. “Fight for Hawke, and we will handle the rest.”

To the Void with it. Isabela pushes herself out of her chair, makes her way to the window, and leans against one of the mullions, glass in hand. Dawn blushes on the eastern horizon, the graceful silhouettes of the city etched stark against the rising sun. She’s always loved Dairsmuid: a far cry from Llomerryn, maybe, but alive and vibrant in a way few other places in Thedas are. Oh, she loves Kirkwall too, of course, but it’s apples and oranges, grog and spiced rum, a tryst in a shady corner of the Hanged Man and a night in Hawke’s four-poster bed, drowning in sheets of crimson silk and milky, warm flesh.

How long ago that seems now. She’s never fooled herself into thinking it was more than physical. At least when the two of them were tangled together in Hawke’s bed, bodies doing what bodies do best, Hawke wasn’t thinking about Fenris.

And then Isabela left too.

To think her reasons made sense at the time. You do something selfless once, and people expect you to keep doing it. Better not let them get their hopes up in the first place. Better not accept their help if it means owing them afterwards. Better not have friends if it means having to watch them dangle from the Arishok’s blade. So Isabela up and left. Hawke could keep her smiles and her pretty blues and her Maker-forsaken city. Kirkwall was hers, after all: she fixed Isabela’s mess almost at the cost of her own life, so the least Isabela could do was leave the city, and leave it to Hawke.

Now she knows better. It was fear that sent her running—the same reason Fenris left, too, and the irony isn’t lost on her. She returned to find them making eyes at each other again, their years-long dance around each other finally drawing to its saccharine finish. If she ever had a chance, it was long gone by then.

For a moment she hears that siren’s call again, the voice whispering to turn back and leave, shed her burdens like jettisoning cargo. She can gather her crew, return to Llomerryn, and chase prizes on the Bay of Rialto, with nary a care except how much gold and jewels can fit on her person at a time.

Isabela listens to its sweet, heady melody, indulging in the memory of the lightness she felt then, when she carried nothing but herself.

Lightness, or hollowness?

In the distance, she can make out the proud spear of the Circle tower, etched black against the pink and lavender ribbons of the morning sky. She drains her glass, then turns back to Badr. He hasn’t said a word in minutes, but his dark eyes catch hers, inquisitive. “I assume you have a plan, then,” she finally says.

Badr grins.


	17. Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke’s escape attempt from the Circle was a failure, but she accepts to collaborate with First Enchanter Rivella, who has the unenviable task of trying to appease both the Seekers and Hawke. They take part in a ritual in order to know more about Fenris’s whereabouts, but things don’t go exactly as planned.

N’na is an old, old woman, gnarly as tree bark and blind as a deepstalker.

_They say she’s so old she’s forgotten her own name_ , Subira whispered during their ablutions, a mixture of coarse sea salt and embrium rubbed on hands and feet. N’na simply means “mother” in some faraway dialect of Rivain, Hawke learned, a name befitting her station as Circle elder. Her frail, aged body doesn’t permit the descent to the lower levels of the tower anymore, so anyone seeking her counsel has to make the arduous pilgrimage to the ritual room at the top of the spiral staircase.

There’s no denying the woman before her is old, very much so, but something about her countenance makes her seem almost ageless, like that’s how she’s always looked and how she will still look, centuries from now. Coarse silver hair falls down her shoulders in a long ornate braid, secured with jeweled bands of gold, and the holes in her earlobes are stretched to such an extent the rings rest on the embroidered silk of her robes. Almost every spare inch of dark papery skin is inked with shapes whose significance are sadly lost on Hawke; the woman’s back is curled up on itself like a fern frond, and her eyes are glazed over with a milky, almost iridescent haze, but the vivid spark somehow still animating them makes it hard to hold her blind gaze.

Hawke can hear her mother scoffing at the idea of an old woman garbed in such gaudy accoutrements, but the overall effect leaves her awed. The wrinkled, tattooed skin seems to blend right into the colourful patterns dyed in the silk of her clothes, and instead Hawke finds herself hoping she too can wear a small fortune’s worth of jewelry with half as much aplomb when— _if_ —she reaches that age.

“Don’t be so nervous,” N’na says in the tongue of Rivain, while Subira translates seamlessly for the elder. “I’ve done this since long before you were born. You and your child will be safe.”

Her child. The word falls in her thoughts like a rock in a still pond, the shivering ripples sending heat to her cheeks. No denying it anymore: the new, gentle curve of her belly is ample proof on its own, but if she closes her eyes and feels the contours of her own being, she can feel that strange inchoate knot of life energy spooling inside her, both herself and not.

Both herself and Fenris, and neither.

The mint-scented plumes of steam rising from her tea part around her breath. “Tell me how it works,” Hawke asks in a whisper, low enough not to seep through the hanging canopy of sheer silk encircling them.

It’s Rivella who speaks this time. “Entire lifetimes are recorded in the Fade as dreams and memories. We learn to commune with spirits and seek their counsel, for only they can tap into the repositories of knowledge of the Fade. This we do to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and to remember the oaths sworn by our ancestors.”

“How do you know they can be trusted?” Hawke asks in a small voice.

“Do you trust anyone? No: you trust people you’ve known for a long time, who have proved themselves over years,” Rivella answers. She reaches for the ceramic teapot and refills N’na’s cup, the movement baring the ink swirling around the small, sharp bone of her wrist. “It is the same with spirits. We forge friendships with them over lifetimes, even generations.”

“Are you”—Hawke gropes for a neutral word, finds none—“possessed right now?”

N’na laughs, a warm, golden laugh that crackles like a burning log. “Not at this time,” Subira translates for her. “We learn to make ourselves smooth as a pearl, so the spirit will slip away on its own. Mages in heightened states of emotion are like”—a short pause as Subira clarifies the meaning of a word—“like burrs. They catch on everything.”

Hawke watches the gently rippling surface of her tea for a moment. She thinks of Anders, the man she could so easily have loved: charming, handsome, kind brown eyes lighting up whenever she stepped into his clinic, no matter how tired he was. It still hurts, even after all this time. “Can—can an abomination make themselves smooth again and let the spirit go?”

There’s something uncharacteristically gentle in Rivella’s gaze as she answers, and Hawke has the feeling she knows exactly who she means. “It can be done, but both mage and spirit have to _want_ to let go, which is rarely the case in such situations.”

When Subira speaks this time, the words are her own: “It’s like … Maker, I can’t even describe it. Like you’ve become something greater than yourself. You’re one with the whole world, and you’ll never be alone again,” she finishes, a dreamy smile playing at the corners of her full mouth.

“It takes great strength to willingly let go,” Rivella concurs, “and that’s why we train mages rigorously before allowing them to become a vessel.”

Hawke asks, “And what if they can’t let go? What then?”

“There are ways, of course,” Rivella answers. “Rituals, calling upon other, more powerful spirits … Sometimes they can be convinced, but if the spirit has to be forced away, often neither it nor the mage recovers. It’d be akin to setting your house on fire to stave off intruders.”

“Oh,” Hawke simply says, and knows the glimmer of hope inside her for what it is only when it goes out again.

Her father did what he could, she knows. Teaching two young apostates to control their powers in secret was no small feat _without_ spirits involved, and she can’t blame him for merely making sure they wouldn’t burn down the harvest every time they threw a tantrum. Part of her wishes he’d taught her more of what he knew, though, and the renewed realization of how little she actually knows makes her feel very small.

“Don’t you worry, girl. I’ve loved and raged and despaired for a lifetime,” N’na says, while Subira translates. The elder’s grin shirrs the skin at the corners of her milky eyes, and bares the jewels encrusted in the few teeth she has left. “It takes much to stir me now.”

Subira lights a bundle of dried embrium with a magical flame, and her smile gleams playfully in the glow. “N’na is so old nothing catches on her anymore,” she adds, winking. “She’s been worn smooth.”

Hawke frowns at her tea. “What about the Maker?” she blurts out, and immediately wishes she could crawl under the low table.

N’na sips on her tea and smacks her lips. “What about Him?”

“Well, the teachings of the Circles are Andrastian, aren’t they? Don’t they contradict your beliefs?”

Her cheeks grow warm as she speaks. These are an outsider’s questions, naive at best and insulting at worst, but if N’na thinks so, it doesn’t show. She smiles, sightless eyes somehow staring right at Hawke. “You’ve heard of the Qunari Wars, yes?”

“Only a little,” Hawke admits, the blush creeping down the back of her neck. What she knows could fill a thimble, really. The name evokes memories of her father hunched over some dusty, grimy book he found in the Amaranthine city market, while she kicked her feet in the air, waiting to be dismissed so she could play outside instead. She came to regret not paying more attention when she ended up skewered on the Arishok’s greatsword; during her recovery she spent more than a few afternoons abed, while Fenris told her how the allied forces of Thedas drove the horned giants away after half an age, and how the Orlesians plundered the thrice-cursed Tome of Koslun that would end up in the hands of a certain pirate queen. “They captured much of the land,” Hawke continues, scrunching up her face as she tries to remember, “but they were eventually pushed back to Par Vollen and Seheron.”

N’na nods. “And to Kont-aar, to the north of this country. Many were slaughtered during these wars, and many more chose to submit to the Qun rather than face death. Our own traditions speak of the land of dreams and spirits, while the Qun teaches us about our place in this realm. For many, these teachings are complementary.

“But when the Chantry recaptured the land, they found themselves surrounded by heretics, so they marched against the very people they sought to liberate. Men, women, and children were put to the sword. The survivors were left to rebuild the country on the graves of their loved ones, my own grandmother among them. Like many, she added Andraste’s name to her prayers, but also taught her children the ancient arts of the seers, which I am passing down to the mages of this Circle.

“The Maker is only as real as His worshipers. His wars are real. The blood shed in His name is real. How can I not believe in Him?”

N’na falls quiet at that, and so does Subira once she reaches the end of her translation. The scented air inside the silk hangings of the canopy is thick with ages’ worth of grief, and even the sharp sea wind blowing in from the latticed windows does little to dispel it. Hawke swallows hard, her hands clasped around fistfuls of her pantaloons. Maker, but she’s tired of war. Once again, she’s struck by the realization of her own insignificance: a mere speck in centuries’ worth of suffering, a pebble against the tide of an invasion set in motion ages ago. She’s made about as much difference as a lone firefly on a moonless night.

Subira gives her shoulder a squeeze, her palm warm through the amethyst fabric of her sleeve. Hawke can’t help the watery laugh that rises out of her. “I’m not the one who needs to be comforted after this,” she says.

It’s Rivella who speaks this time, uncorking a vial of lyrium and emptying its contents into a bowl of hammered silver. “You see yourself as an outsider, but you are a woman and a mage, as we are. If there is a Maker, He is in us women, remaking this world one child at a time, and in us mages, shaping things to our will and listening to the voices of His first children.” Her green eyes flit to Hawke’s face, and a rare smile stretches her lips. “Spirits seek to see the world through our eyes; we seers train to see the world through _theirs_.”

Hawke takes a deep breath that smells of lyrium and salt. “And it won’t hurt, right? Me or Fenris or the—the baby?”

That makes N’na smile, too, deepening the wrinkles creasing her skin. “The two of you have made love and made a child, and now you share the strongest connection of all: blood. The spirit will simply follow that thread to him so that we may learn where he is.”

At that, the women’s movements take on the slow, reverent grace of ritual. Long tendrils of sunlight stream through the plumes of embrium smoke, its soft fragrant haze filling the canopy and stinging the eyes. Offerings have been laid carefully on the low table: tea brewed from fresh, bruised mint, candied nuts and anise seeds, a cluster of colourful flowers Hawke picked from the garden.

_These are all things she likes_ , Subira explained, and Hawke didn’t need to be told she didn’t mean N’na. These are gifts, tokens of gratitude offered in exchange for the spirit’s time and answers, chosen with care to make its visit in the realm of the waking as pleasant as possible. N’na met this spirit—a spirit of Love, Hawke was told, only fitting considering the nature of her request—through her mother decades ago, and there’s something joyful in the woman’s countenance now, as though she were preparing to greet an old friend.

And isn’t that the case?

The quicksilver gleam of the lyrium casts a whimsical light on the women’s faces as the silver bowl is passed from hands to hands. Hawke can’t remember the last time she drank lyrium: it rolls down her tongue thick and smooth, the metallic taste leaving her tongue tingling slightly. Her magic, still weakened from the lingering effects of the magebane and her trials of the past few days, roars back to life under her skin. Then the women start waving the volutes of burning embrium towards themselves as though to perfume their hair, though they’re in fact casting spells—or rather, half-casting them: they spin strands of magic in the air and leave them suspended there, till Hawke feels lightheaded, the inside of the silk canopy hanging in a dream.

It feels strange. To Hawke, magic was always meant to _change_ things, to reorder the real world according to her will, but this is different from everything she’s ever known, like picking a single thread in a tapestry and following it back to the hands that wove it. _Not_ plucking at the tendrils of magic to spin them into a spell is a challenge. Hawke feels oddly self-conscious, like all this time she’s been handling precious, fragile things without permission, setting them back in place upside down and covered in greasy fingerprints.

The magic thickens. It envelops her in a soft, cottony cocoon, and ripples inside her in answer till her skin feels thin as gossamer, till she can barely tell where she ends and the rest of the world begins. The ancient, bittersweet song of the lyrium thrums in her blood, and she’s almost overwhelmed with a longing not entirely her own. When she lifts her eyelids again—she didn’t even notice she closed them, the separation between the inside and outside of her mind now thin as tissue paper—she finds herself staring into N’na’s eyes, now all-seeing.

She doesn’t even need to voice her request. Her thoughts and innermost desires are right there in the open, floating on the strands of magic and sunlight falling into the room. A slight change in the vibration of the magic around her, and Hawke notices for the first time that N’na’s hand is in hers, gnarled, jeweled knuckles tightening around hers. “Two souls in such perfect balance is a rare thing,” the Circle elder says, her voice twinned to the slow roll of magic unfurling over her like an ocean wave. No need for translation anymore, the meaning of the words now as clear to Hawke as her own thoughts. “He reins in your fire, you keep him warm. Remarkable.”

Emotion wells up inside her. Hawke opens her mouth to take a sharp inhale, and then she _feels_ him, close enough to touch. A waft of lyrium and leather, the warm scent of clean linen and woodsmoke; she feels the quiet strength of his back under her cheek, the steadying clasp of his hand around hers, the calm, comforting rhythm of his heartbeat. A thin silvery thread arcs from under her navel into the vast expanse of the Fade, and she knows Fenris waits for her at the other end of it.

Without thinking, she reaches out with her mind and touches it.

Her feet sink into mulch and soft earth. She clasps a sinuous branch just in time to right herself, surrounded by the song of birds and insects, and heat thick enough to drink, heavy with impending rain and the commingled scents of rot and green new life. Narrow spars of sunlight shift between the leafy canopy high overhead; ropey vines festoon mossy branches, and leaves the size of serving platters fight for space with strange flowers, creeping around tree trunks or sprouting from the fork of branches. Movement catches her eye, and she turns to see a bird preening the long, curved feathers of its pink tail.

“That might as well happen,” Hawke says, trying to master the wild, hammering beat of her heart. “I’m in the jungle.”

Well, the Fade reflection of a jungle: as lifelike as her surroundings are, she’s a decent enough mage to know on which side of the Veil she’s currently standing. The place is teeming with more spirits than actual birds or bugs—though that doesn’t keep her from swatting nervously at her face when some uncomfortably large insect buzzes past it.

Seheron, she realizes. She’s in Seheron, where Fenris was born.

At least it’s hot enough for it, that much is certain. She forces herself to take slow, deep breaths, but the almost liquid air leaves her panting instead. If these are Fenris’s recollections, then that explains why everything is preserved so vividly, his mind keener than the whetted blade of his greatsword. Is this how the spirit chose to answer her question? It makes no sense, but she forces herself to move through the thicket all the same, gripping the vines and low branches within reach as her bare feet squelch in the mud.

She trudges aimlessly at first, till she remembers the thread of light that got her here in the first place. It takes her a few tries focusing and refocusing her mind’s eye before she glimpses its faint glint in the air again, like a strand of spider silk when the light hits just so. Her heart leaps up her throat at the sight, and Hawke wonders briefly if her unborn child’s mind is here with her in the Fade, or if it sleeps peacefully in her womb in the waking realm, undisturbed.

No time for this now, though. She follows the gold-silver shine of the thread deeper into the jungle, stirring whole trees awake whenever she pushes a branch or tendril of vine out of the way. “Fenris!” she calls out, but the only answer she gets is cawing birds and the sigh of the rain starting to fall, sluicing down leaves in small rivulets. “ _Fenris!_ ”

Still no answer, except a fog thick as cream, pale billows of it suddenly rolling between the trees to swallow up her feet. It leaves everything mantled in thick, white haze, muffling her footfalls and the sound of her voice. The chirping birds fall quiet, and the myriad little noises of the jungle vanish into the strange, silent fog. Hawke sees nothing anymore except the shining thread still sprouting from her belly, so she gropes half-blind through the fog, panic mounting inside her. The spirits already know she’s there: a mage in the Fade is as a beacon in the night, so she calls out for Fenris again, and again and again and again, even as the misty droplets floating in front of her face scatter the sound of her voice into minute unintelligible shards.

And then Fenris calls back.

“ _Here!_ ”

Just one word, one syllable, barely audible through the thick jungle and thicker fog all about her, but Hawke would know that voice anywhere. A sob breaches her lips despite herself. It might not be him, she knows. It might be a trap, or worse, a construct of her mind giving her what she wants to hear, but the mere sound of his voice is enough to send relief coursing through her in an electrifying jolt. The air is still nigh unbreathable here in this Fade projection of Seheron, but it feels like she’s breathing again for the first time in days.

Hawke sobs Fenris’s name as she runs through the fog. The tears would blind her even if she could see anything, so she ignores the branches clawing at her clothes and scratching at her face. None of this is real, anyway: all that matters is the thread of light glistening in her mind’s eye, and Fenris’s voice, guiding her feet.

Her toe catches on some root or crawling vine; Hawke falls, but something— _someone_ —steadies her. She knows him at once, his markings calling out to her magic even here in the land of dreams, the lines of lyrium unfurling silver through the fog. Her hand finds his, strong, warm, beloved, and clasps it tight.

It doesn’t last. Coils of vines loop around her body and tear her away from their fleeting embrace; their woven fingers part like a seam ripping, and some primal cry of rage wells up her throat. The vines lift her into the air, and more snake around her limbs, thick and leathery. One slips around her neck like a noose, another between her teeth, strangling the flood of obscenities crowding her mouth. A face—or the impression of a face, anyway—appears before her, ripples of displaced fog etching skin like bark and two gaping holes she takes as eyes. _Away! **Away!**_ it says though it has no mouth, the cavernous sound of its voice throbbing inside her skull.

Whatever this thing is, it’s angry, but nowhere near as she is. Hawke summons fire; gouts of flame sprout from her fingers and tear through the vines like wildfire. The whipping ropes hiss and squirm as the reek of burning plant matter rises through the air, but more lash through the fog to replace those she burns down. The coils wind tighter and tighter, and a muffled scream spills around the vine in Hawke’s mouth as her joints pop out of their sockets and her windpipe gives way under the pressure—

She falls back, still screaming. Hands reach for her, but she kicks and fights them off till her surroundings make sense again. The cool ceramic tiles of the ritual room under her cheek, the sea air scented with embrium and mint, the sheer silk hangings of the canopy, now tangled around her thrashing limbs. No vines. No pain except the memory of it lingering in her joints.

No Fenris.

Rivella and Subira are both leaning over her, eyes wide with concern. They help her sit up again, and Subira rights an upturned cup before filling it with steaming tea.

Hawke accepts the proffered cup, and takes a sip of the shaking liquid. “He’s—he’s in the Fade,” she manages, her throat still squeezed tight, her pulse deafening in her own ears. All the magic in the room has leached back into the Fade. “I _heard_ him, and I saw—I saw this—this _demon_ keeping him trapped in the Fade.” Her head snaps towards N’na. “Did you see that?”

“I saw him,” the old woman answers, Subira translating for her again after a startled pause, “on the Amaranthine, on a ship manned by the horned giants of the north.”

The Qunari? “What? No. No, I _saw_ him—”

“It is as you saw. His mind wanders the Fade, but his physical body is on that ship.”

The relief is fleeting, swept away by the geyser of thoughts filling her head. Hawke presses her fingers to her closed eyes. “I don’t understand,” she pants. “Why? Why would he be with the Qunari?”

“As far as I can tell, they are tending to him, keeping him alive with drops of sugarcane juice.”

“And that demon? The Qunari _hate_ demons,” Hawke retorts.

“Perhaps if they did not insist on muzzling their mages, they’d be aware of its presence,” Rivella answers, not even trying to hide her disgust. “It’s not unheard of for non-mages to fall prey to demons, and the lyrium markings would certainly draw their attention as well. An opportunistic scavenger would be my guess.”

_He’s alive_ , Hawke tells herself, trying to focus on this one truth. _Fenris is alive_. “Send me back,” she blurts out, looking into N’na’s cloudy gaze. “Send me back into the Fade, and I’ll help him find his way out.”

N’na heaves a deflating sigh. “I did not send you there, child.”

Rivella mutters a curse that sounds suspiciously like Orlesian, while Subira’s dark eyes carom between the other women’s faces. Hawke ignores them both. “But it _can_ be done,” she retorts, remembering Arianni’s hovel in the Kirkwall alienage, where her sleeping mind searched for Feynriel as he wandered the Fade. “I’ve done it before. I know the risks.”

“That is _not_ the point,” Rivella snaps back. “I am _not_ sending a woman with child into the Fade. Who knows what might happen to you while you’re there? What if your mind is severed from your body and you never even get to love your child?”

Anger spikes through her, and heat rushes to her face, stinging her eyes. “It’s his child, too! I don’t want it if it’s without Fenris.” She’s almost shouting now, but she can’t stop herself, days of pent-up fear now surfacing all at once as the blood beats wild under her skin. “I can’t do this alone, and I can’t just _leave_ him there. No one would even bat an eyelash if it weren’t for this, what, acorn-sized thing?” she finishes, gesturing towards her belly.

“More of a lemon now,” N’na volunteers.

Hawke takes a sharp breath to steady herself. “I know what to do. It has to be someone he trusts, and Fenris doesn’t trust easily. It has to be me. I’m not asking for permission, First Enchanter.”

“Permission for what?” a voice booms from the other end of the room.

All eyes turn in its direction. There in the horseshoe doorway of the ritual room stands one of the Seekers of Truth, the Watchful Eye etched on his breastplate trained on them. The ponderous clang of his black boots against the sunlit patterns on the floor seems almost sacrilegious, and Hawke feels her skin crawl when his disdainful gaze sweeps the room.

Subira helps N’na to her feet. Rivella unfolds herself in one graceful movement, holding her head up high as he enters, Knight-Commander Badr on his heels. Behind the Seeker’s frankly absurd pauldrons, Badr catches Rivella’s eyes and winces apologetically before touching one fist to his heart in a salute.

The Seeker’s greying whiskers twitch. “This room reeks of magic,” he says.

“A routine ritual, nothing more, my Lord Seeker,” Badr answers.

Lord Seeker Lambert van Reeves, then. He swivels to face Badr, the bulk of him tense with barely suppressed anger. “‘Nothing more’? I’ve only been here a fortnight and witnessed all manner of aberrant behaviour: mages holding counsel and performing rituals without the least oversight, walking to and fro as they please. They could be fomenting rebellion right under your nose, Knight-Commander. Are you really so naive?”

Apparently the argument has been going on for a while. “These women have proved themselves time and again,” Badr answers, his voice surprisingly even. The strange gleam of his eyes is the only thing betraying his anger. “They can be trusted.”

“Can they now? Most unharrowed, five unaccounted for.”

“They were given _permission_ to leave the tower. And by tradition our mages do not undergo their”—a brief pause, as though rejecting one word for another—“ _harrowing_ before they turn twenty.”

Ignoring Badr, Lambert approaches Hawke instead, his footfalls too loud in the quiet of the ritual room. He studies her with an expression one would normally reserve for a turd left on expensive carpeting. “And this one? Unharrowed _and_ quite a few springs older than twenty.”

_Fuck you too, then_ , Hawke very nearly retorts, but Rivella speaks first. No spirits needed to know whatever Hawke was about to say wouldn’t have sat well with the Lord Seeker. “A refugee from the mage rebellion. She’s only just arrived.”

The Lord Seeker’s nostrils flare. “An apostate, then.”

“I can speak for myself, Lord Seeker,” Hawke says, unable to stay quiet. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots Rivella’s shoulders droop with a silent sigh.

Lambert scoffs. “And you are?”

Another step sends his large shadow falling over her, but Hawke holds his gaze, undeterred. She’s faced Kasra and Rosalba, and Knight-Commander Meredith and the Arishok long before them; it takes much more than one zealot in armour to scare her now, but the whole situation is teetering on the edge of a dangerous precipice. As satisfying as it’d be to toss him out the tower’s pretty windows, better not give the Templars a reason to unsheathe their glorified penile extensions.

No point wasting her charm on this one, so she keeps her smile polite and inclines her head. “A _reformed_ apostate, my Lord Seeker, who hopes you will give her the chance to prove herself.”

_Said no Circle mage, ever_ , she thinks, but if Lambert suspects she’s lying, his pale, cold eyes let nothing on. After a moment, he turns back to face the Knight-Commander; Badr is a tall man, taller than Lambert in fact, but between the pauldrons and the malevolent aura rolling off him, Lambert seems to dwarf him, like an evil bird puffing up its feathers. “Listen to me, Knight-Commander,” he says, pitching his voice low, but not low enough to stay out of the mages’ earshot. “I am giving you a fortnight to right the gross mishandling of this Circle. Apprentices are to undergo their Harrowing as soon as possible. The mages who have vacated the premises are to be brought back to the Circle before sundown tomorrow, or I will have no choice but to declare them apostates, in which case they shall be shown no mercy. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes, my Lord Seeker,” Badr says with a stiff salute.

Lambert whirls around to study them for a few infuriating seconds, then turns back on his heel and leaves—a wonder he’s not making himself dizzy with all the dramatic about-facing. Everyone waits till the echoing clang of his armour has faded down the hallway before breathing again, not quite in relief. Badr mutters something in Rivaini and slowly unclenches his fists. Subira, whose hands were clasped to her mouth this whole time, finally lets them drop to her sides again, and N’na simply stares blankly ahead, the crags on her brow deeper than they were a few minutes ago.

Hawke’s eyes meet Rivella’s. The First Enchanter has every right to tell her _I told you so_ in her haughtiest tone, but instead she simply nods almost imperceptibly, and they leave the ritual room without a word.


	18. Fenris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now mostly recovered from his injuries, Fenris is settling into his new life on Seheron with the Fog Warriors, till a mysterious voice in the jungle makes him realize things may not be as they seem.

While Fenris has never enjoyed the taste of fish—or the smell, or the texture for that matter—it turns out he enjoys fishing itself. At least he enjoys fishing the way the Fog Warriors do it, knee-deep in the stream that cuts through the village, spear poised over his shoulder. Mistakes are costly: if one misses, the splashing can startle the fish away for minutes at a time, so the hand must strike true, and the eye account for the refraction of light through the water. He and Rimak have entered a friendly competition of sorts, and both survey the stream for that telltale flash of quicksilver amidst the leafy reflections on the surface. _Try not to stab yourself in the foot_ , Rimak told him with a wink and a lopsided grin, but for now Fenris is leading, with three fish to his name already.

So he waits, enjoying the way the silt feels between his toes, the current rippling about his bare calves, the quiet that’s not really quiet but a symphony of myriad tiny noises: the gurgling stream, the shrill chorus of teeming insect life, the branches cracking and popping under an animal’s weight. The running water of the stream provides some relief from the heat of the jungle, even as a film of sweat layers his skin. Sisa is somewhere up in the canopy, searching for those tiny tree frogs coloured like gemstones; Fenris has seen her slide a dull blade down their bright skin to harvest the venom that will soon coat her arrowheads.

When the sound of his name rends the air, at first he thinks it’s her.

Sisa wouldn’t be calling out for him, though, especially not in that kind of tremulous shriek. He catches her face amidst the trees, framed by strings of bark, and she looks just as puzzled as he feels.

Again: a woman screaming out his name, somewhere deep in the jungle.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Rimak says in a rough whisper, but Fenris has crossed the stream in two strides, water splashing the cuffed legs of his trousers as he wades towards the voice. The jungle is so dense he can barely see a thing between the thick boles streaking his field of vision. For one long, overstrung moment, there’s not a sound but the water sluicing down his legs to drip onto the mossy rocks at his feet, and the deep, dark beat of his pulse drumming in his ears.

He _knows_ that voice. He knows it, and yet it sifts through the porous membrane of his memory, like the tail-end of a dream upon waking.

When it screams his name again, Fenris starts to run.

He whips branches out of his way with his spear, but a blade would be better to carve himself a way through the leafage. Leaves and ropey coils of vine lash at his face; rocks and roots prick at the calloused soles of his feet, but he barely feels them. Moving through the jungle is arduous at the best of times, but with only a distant voice to guide his steps, it is nigh impossible. He does not yet have the Fog Warriors’ seemingly innate sense of the jungle’s maze-like paths, and he doubts he ever will. All he can do is follow the sound of his own name, and hope he hasn’t strayed too far from its source by the time it echoes again amidst the pale, shimmering mists.

“ _Fenris!_ ” the woman calls out again.

This time, her voice sounds close enough he expects a glimpse of her amidst the greenery, but thick billows of fog pour in from between the vine-choked trees, till a pale blanket shrouds the jungle and swallows up all its little noises. “ _No_ ,” he says between clenched teeth, the harsh panting sound of his own breath filling the quiet. His entire body is strung with anticipation as he waits to hear the voice again; he briefly thinks of the glimmering scales flashing in the stream, but the thought of the woman vanishing into the fog before he can see her face strikes him with terror, and he cannot will himself to stay still.

“Here,” Fenris calls out. The height of foolishness—he has no idea who—or _what_ —is out there in the fog. “I’m here.”

The answer comes closer than he expects, close enough he can feel the fog purling around her as she whirls around to face him. “ _Fen_ ,” she calls out, so close he only has to stretch his hand out to touch her.

He senses rather than sees her fall, and drops his spear to catch her. He cannot even see his own hand in front of him, but he touches the firm, smooth skin of a bare shoulder, warm and dewy in the jungle humidity, and smells the delicate fragrance of roses, threaded with the tang of leather. The woman’s hand slips in his now, and all he has to do is pull her towards him to see her face emerge from the fog, and know her name—

Just as fast, her fingers slide out of his. Something coils itself around his arms and tugs him back—vines, he thinks in his panic, though that makes no sense. “Wait,” he gasps as he tries to wrest himself free, but the woman does not answer this time, nor does she call out for him again. “ _Wait_ ,” but there is no answer except the anechoic hush of the fog.

Enough. His markings come to life, imparting an eerie glow to the fog, and he’s about to slip out of the vines’ tightening hold when they speak: “Hey,” they say, and he distantly recognizes Rimak’s voice. “It’s me.”

Arms. Not vines, but _arms_. As the fog starts to lift, the other man seems to grow solid before his very eyes, like the mists were returning his substance as they dissipate. The lyrium of his markings goes dormant again, and the instant Rimak lets down his guard, Fenris shoves him back against the trunk of a tree.

“What did you do that for?” he snarls. Overhead, the tree rustles with the shock, and birds take flight with shrill, indignant cries. Rimak attempts to push him off, but Fenris has him pinned into place. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sisa slipping through the trees, like a cat hunting prey.

Rimak meets his gaze, panting. His ruddy cheeks are flushed an even darker shade of red. “Why do you think? You have no idea what that was, and yet you run to it like a child to its mother.”

“Fenris, let him go,” Sisa says, but he ignores her.

“It was not up to you to decide,” he retorts, and slams Rimak back against the tree before he even knows what he’s doing. “I _know_ that voice.”

Rimak’s mouth gives an angry twist. “No, you don’t. And even if you did, it doesn’t matter. You’re safe among friends here, and you would throw it all away for what, a voice in the fog?”

“That was _my_ decision to make,” Fenris manages through clenched teeth.

Sisa’s brown, freckled hand covers his. “Fenris, let him go,” she says again, a low note of warning in her voice. “It’s too late now, anyway.”

Anger has locked his hands into fists, and it takes him every last ounce of willpower to let Rimak go. “ _Venhedis_ ,” Fenris says under his breath. He doesn’t miss the way Rimak’s mouth twitches at the sound of Tevene, and a petty curl of satisfaction unfurls inside Fenris at the distance it draws between them.

The three of them return to the muddy banks of the stream in silence to retrieve the fish and the vials of fresh poison. The walk back to the village feels thrice as long as it did that morning, and even without the fog the jungle seems dark and treacherous now, despite the sun shining again through the gentle sway of the greenery.

* * *

Fenris waits till dawn turns the trees a dull, ghostly green. He retrieves his greatsword from its spot against the wall of the hut where he sleeps; this is the first time he has gone so long without holding it, and after manning nothing more than a fishing spear for days, he’s surprised by the bulking weight of it in his hand. Nevertheless, he slips the two-hander over his shoulder, throws one last look at the tree towering over the village, then slinks into the pale strands of mists wreathing the jungle.

He does not have much in the way of a plan. The voice was gone as suddenly as it came, and with it any trace of the woman it belongs to. Part of him doubts whether she was even there at all, but he remembers the faint fragrance of roses floating in her wake and the dewy, smooth skin of her shoulder under his hand, and knows he must look for her. Nami said the Fog Warriors found him on the beach, so he follows the river downstream as it sings over rocks and toppled, rotting logs. An adequate starting point as any, and less treacherous than taking his chances in the depths of the jungle. The Fog Warriors spend their whole lives learning to navigate the dense maze of Seheron: somehow Rimak and Sisa can tell two trees apart by the angle of their fork, the patterns written in moss and lichen on their bark, the fronds and scallops of their leaves, but all Fenris has gleaned from them is how to weave fishing nets out of fibrous bark and wrap food in leaves for storage and cooking.

He’s on his own now, however. He tries to train his eye to notice the minute differences in his surroundings as he picks his way along the moist, muddy banks of the stream, but within minutes every new distinctive rock starts looking like another one he saw several steps back. He thought himself observant, but nothing stands out in the ever-shifting greenery enclosing him on all sides. All he sees is _green_. Green all around him, the tree leaves rustling under the weight of invisible creatures; green above, where pale light trickles through the canopy; and green underfoot, specks of new life improbably dotting the layer of rotting plant matter crumbling under his steps.

_Fasta vass_. It’s enough to make him miss Kirkwall’s never-ending stairs.

Except he’s never been there. Fenris stops to catch his breath, and wipes the sweat beading his forehead with one arm. Kirkwall rises in his mind’s eye with stunning clarity: the city’s glittering crown of white marble, its sheer cliffs falling into a churning sea the colour of slate, the slave-carved stairs imbued with a feeling both strange and familiar, like noticing something so mundane one has stopped seeing it. He’s climbed these stairs again and again in a past life, seen them sheeted with rain, felt them scald the bottom of his feet under the Solis sun, sat on the edge of a step waiting for someone, till at last she appeared smiling and slightly out of breath, waving as she called out his name—

Something screeches in a nearby tree, and the memory scatters before he can make out her lineaments. Fenris takes a breath to master his running pulse; it occurs to him the Fog Warriors must be looking for him by now, and he starts wending his way over roots and rocks again, trying to focus solely on where to put his foot next.

No sign of the Fog Warriors, though. No sign of anyone at all, in fact, not till some ancient ruin emerges from the jungle to block his path, stretching tall enough to vanish into the mist slowly dissipating overhead. Tevinter, no doubt about it. If not for the vines and moss that claimed it long ago, the blasted thing would have looked right at home in the crowded streets of Minrathous. A relic of times gone by, back when the island still belonged to the Imperium, at least more than just in name. Fenris cannot fathom what it was used for. He cannot even tell if it was there first and the jungle swallowed it over decades, or if the ancient magisters bothered clearing the densely packed trees to erect a tower that would one day fall to oblivion.

He does not let himself hope it means he’s approaching the edge of the jungle. Not keen on swimming, he walks around the structure, large enough the sound of the stream does not even reach his ears anymore at the farthest point. It must have been there for centuries. The trees have grown heedless of its presence, roots as thick as his arms prizing the stones out of their original place, and the base as he makes his way around it seems more precarious than he first imagined. The gates have long rotted away, and a few crumbling steps lead into a doorway gaping askew. The drafts of air blowing out from inside the ruins are surprisingly cold, and Fenris has to resist the temptation to stand there to cool off for a few minutes. When he braces against the stone wall for support to navigate a thick patch of roots, the lyrium of his markings comes alive all at once, cold blue light silvering the nearby leaves.

Never a good sign. He pulls his hand back, and he’s relieved to reach the water again without being smote by some ancient warding spell.

He then resumes his trek downstream, and walks for what feels like hours. His muscles burn; his shirt and trousers are soaked with sweat, his skin chafes under the leather strap of his scabbard, and his body itches with countless little scratches and insect bites. The only hint that it’s probably not been as long as it feels is the sun: it has not yet risen over the canopy to shine through the leaves in thin strands of light, and the sky—or what little he can see of it—is still morning grey. He remembers his earlier vow to pay attention to his surroundings and would laugh at himself now if he had the strength; his senses are filled to the brim with the heat, the green, and the endless screaming noise of the jungle, and anything more detailed than that simply skims past his mind now.

He’s almost forgotten what he’s looking for by the time the jungle opens up again. The thicket gives way to a clearing of sorts, and Fenris steps into the shade of an enormous tree.

His sweat turns cold.

_Hualcana_ is towering over him, its boughs stretched overhead like the arms of a supplicant. The village is starting to rouse itself, people breaking fast with fresh fruit or tending to various chores as the smell of smoked fish assaults his nose.

The jungle lists around him. A last spark of lucidity sends Fenris ducking behind the nearest tree before he drops to his haunches. He does not want the Fog Warriors to see him on the verge of panic, with his greatsword slung over his shoulder and his appearance betraying his recent whereabouts. He tries to force a few ragged breaths into his lungs to keep the impending panic at bay, but his brain is scrambling for an explanation and coming up short, and his pulse is a wet rushing noise in his ears.

He must’ve gotten turned around. He must’ve gotten turned around, except he was following the current all this time, and unless the stream runs in a perfect circle through the jungle—which makes not a whit of sense, of course—there is no way he could have ended up back in the village.

And yet here he is.

Long minutes pass before the shuddering wheeze of his breathing returns to normal, and only then does Fenris allow himself to make his way back to the hut he now shares with Nami and her son.

He does not make it far before his presence is noticed. “Where have you been?” Nami exclaims when he crosses her path on the way to the tree lift. “We were just about to go looking for you.”

He mumbles something about taking his sword into the jungle to train. He doubts she believes him, but she does not press him for answers, and once he emerges from the hut again, changed and clean if still disturbed, a steaming mug of cocoa is pushed into his hands, the decadent, almost earthy smell tickling his nose.

Fenris sips the rich, spicy liquid, and tastes nothing.

* * *

The next morning, he follows the stream again.

He has a different plan this time, though the first hour or two unfold in much the same way. Branches whipping at his face, roots and runners clinging to his ankles, the mud of the bank sinking under his weight. The endless green of the jungle is as mind-numbing as ever, but Fenris tries to remain alert this time, keeping close to the water of the stream and watching for any sign that he might be straying from his path.

He’s drenched in sweat again by the time that ancient Tevinter structure appears within sight, but after the events of the previous day, Fenris is admittedly relieved to see it, dragon-shaped statues and all. At least there is _some_ manner of consistency in this Maker-forsaken place.

This is the culprit, he avers. Now that he knows to look for them, he can feel the faint traces of magic surrounding it, can even feel the energy flowing deeper into the tower like a whirlpool. He meant to swim to get past it this time around, but observing the ruins, another idea forms in his mind instead.

He _assumed_ the place was long abandoned, but its magic is still very much alive. Perhaps he needs not get past it at all.

His markings flare again when he rests a careful foot on the first step of the crumbling staircase. Nothing happens, however, and after a few seconds he concludes—or at least _hopes_ —the threat of collapse is more a risk than the magic. He steps over a slab that’s more cracks than stone, and finally makes it to the top of the staircase. The doorway opens onto darkness so dense it swallows even the pale glow of his markings. The hairs rise on the nape of his neck as Fenris peers inside to see—nothing.

He unsheathes his sword to hack at the roots and deadfall blocking his path, then ventures inside. He half-expects to trigger a magical trap or rouse some Tevinter revenants, but nothing stirs inside the tower. Shadows slither away as the light of his markings glimmers off the moist stone walls, and he makes out the curve of a spiral staircase. The steps that would have led him up into the tower have long collapsed, but the rest of the coil of stairs descends into the dark, deep underground.

A foolish endeavour, Fenris knows, but he resists the urge to turn away and presses into the dark instead. He starts down the narrow, slippery steps, one hand pressed to the curved wall for support. The cold raises gooseflesh on his sweaty skin, and the damp surface of the stone fills him with revulsion, but he focuses on stepping over the cracks in the ancient stone without stumbling to his death. Each time he looks up, the misty light spilling through the doorway has gone down exponentially, and soon the only thing warding off the complete obscurity of the tower is the pulsing flare of his markings. The tower looks alarmingly the same whether he’s looking up or down, and Fenris worries too late about a more insidious sort of trap than he anticipated at first. It’s too late to turn back now, however, so he puts one foot in front of the other, over and over again.

The bitter, briny smell of the sea hits his nose, and looses a swell of relief inside him.

Fenris picks up the pace at that. The smell grows stronger, and eventually a low rumble joins it, vibrating under the soles of his feet to curl up his spine. He almost collapses when he finally reaches the bottom of the stairs, not expecting it anymore. The floor is hewed directly from solid rock, and the curved wall of the tower is bare, save for a misshapen hole opening up into impenetrable darkness.

He follows the drafts of salt air into an enormous cave. Puddles of stagnant water splash under his steps, and for the first few feet, roots dangle overhead before suddenly dropping off into an upside-down cliff. He’s not sure what he expected to find—a tunnel leading to the shore, or some sort of underground canal, perhaps, and it takes him a moment to understand what he’s looking at instead: the sea is _inside_ the cave, a monstrous green mass roiling furiously, waves cresting into strange shimmering mists before curling onto themselves again. Above that impossible sea hangs an even more impossible moon; it both draws and repels him, and the longer he stares at it the more he can feel himself growing insubstantial, like the sight of that lambent disk was draining something out of him, drop by drop.

Fear seizes him by the throat. He attempts to turn around, but the floor of the cave lurches under his feet and he finds himself on hands and knees instead. That strange green surf licks at his heels even as he tries to scramble away, and as the sea tries to sweep him back to itself, it calls his name in no voice he has ever known. A hot flare of anger burns through him as he remembers the woman in the fog, but the thought is washed away in the mounting panic as the sea rises higher and higher, dissolving him like salt in water.

Someone clasps his hand in theirs. Fenris looks up to find himself looking into Rimak’s ruddy, resolute face, and promptly passes out.

* * *

When he comes to, he finds himself lying back on the same straw mat as before. Nami is bent over him again, her upside-down face filling his field of vision as she kneels by his head. “Good,” she says, dabbing his brow with that same medicinal paste. “You’re awake.”

“That was incredibly stupid of you, you know,” Rimak says. Fenris tilts his head to see him leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He looks as pissed as he sounds.

“We should have warned you to avoid the ruins,” Nami continues, swirling her brush around the lyrium dotting his brow. “Well, no matter. The entrance has been sealed off.”

“Good thing you’re easier to track than a bloody dragon,” Rimak snaps, then takes a breath to calm himself. “Why would you even go down there?”

Fenris lets his gaze wander to the smoke hole in the ceiling. Pale daylight rains through the plumes of smoke rising from the embers glowing in the hearth. “I had to see for myself,” he finally answers, remembering that strange green sea and the underground moon that couldn’t possibly be real.

And maybe it wasn’t—Nami did say he took a bad blow to the head, after all. He’s not sure which alternative is worse.

Nami puts down her brush to tuck a sheaf of dark hair behind her ear. “You were looking for that woman, weren’t you?” she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Why? Are we not enough?”

“It’s not that.” He closes his eyes. The medicine is starting to dry and crack on his brow, and a pleasant warmth is spreading through him, warding off the looming headache and the memory of what he saw at the bottom of the tower. Sleep starts taking hold of him, but he remembers to answer just in time: “She came back for me.”

“That doesn’t mean _you_ have to go back to her,” Rimak retorts, a flush mottling his face. “If she cared about you at all, she would let you stay here with us and be _safe_ , instead of always dragging you back into her own battles. How many times have you risked your life to save hers? She left you for dead on that beach, for gods’ sake. Without us, you’d be _dead_.

“And look what good it did you when you left this place. You could’ve gotten lost or injured, or _worse_ ,” Rimak continues, his voice hotter than he’s ever heard it, and for the first time Fenris realizes Nami too is speaking the same words, her voice twinned to her son’s. “Let all that you’ve suffered be worth it, and stay here with us. Here we bow to no master. We live off the bounty of the jungle, off nectar and fruit and the meat of game and fish; we reap the rewards of our own toil, and when we face an enemy, it is as one. So rest your head, and never have a care again for what lies outside the shield of Hualcana’s canopy.”

If it strikes Fenris as strange, it’s only in an abstract, distant kind of way, the way dreams are only strange upon waking. The fierce sound of their voices fills him with reassurance instead of fear, and he knows they speak the truth.

He is safe here, and nothing else matters.


	19. Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After momentarily encountering Fenris in the Fade during a ritual meant to reveal his whereabouts, Hawke is determined to find a way to go back there and free him from the clutches of the demon holding him captive.

Hawke was _so close_.

Close enough to hear Fenris, smell him, feel his hand wrapped warm and tight around hers. She _felt_ him, that thread of spun gold stretched taut between them. All she has to do is go back, and she can find a way to free him. She must.

_I did not send you there_ , _child_ , N’na said, which means there’s a _way_.

The setting sun has set the Bay of Rialto ablaze. It burns from Dairsmuid to Antiva, the sails of ships glowing like open flame, but the blood pounding under her skin burns hotter. Hawke wants to stick her head out the window and scream, throw her own fire to the sky till everything is aflame, empty herself of all magic till she’s left numb and hollow.

Never one for patience, Hawke, but now she must bide her time. The minutes stretch long, and the sun stays suspended in the lowest quadrant of the sky for what feels like hours. She keeps her hands busy with needle and thread till dinner, turning an old sock and a pair of buttons into a stuffed dragon for Lathianni while her mind tries to hatch a plan. The Circle gates are guarded at all times, letters are read—if allowed to be sent out of the tower at all—and besides, contacting any of her associates would risk giving her away. She’s caged, a prisoner, and somewhere in the Fade, Fenris is just as trapped as she.

But her mind’s still free, Seekers be damned.

It’s a relief when at last she can put herself to bed after a few scant bites of dinner. Lathi slips under the brushed-cotton sheets, Ser Clawsome caught in her grip like a vaguely dragon-shaped extension of her small hand. “Why do you look so sad?” the little girl asks, once she’s curled up comfortably against Hawke.

No point downplaying it. “I miss someone,” Hawke whispers, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, “very much.”

“Who is it?”

“The man I love. He’s an elf, like you,” she adds, allowing herself a small smile.

Lathi’s violet eyes light up, even in the deepening night. “Is he Dalish too?”

“Ah, no. He’s from a very big city in Tevinter. Minrathous.”

“Oh.” The girl chews on her lip for a moment, considering this. “Will you go back to him?”

“I hope so. Do you know where your family is, Lathi?”

“In the Beyond,” the girl answers, too matter-of-factly for her young years. Maker’s breath. “I’ll miss you if you go.”

Hawke stares up at the high, shadowy vault of the ceiling as she strokes the little girl’s soft hair, whatever’s left of her heart breaking again. “I’ll miss you too,” she says through the tightness of her throat.

The girl dozes off before long, her head nestled in the crook of Hawke’s shoulder, small body warm against hers. Hawke lifts one hand in front of her, curls her fingers in the approximate size of a lemon, then rests her palm tentatively on her belly. Bigger than she would’ve thought, if N’na is to be believed. She’s not sure which is the most ludicrous: her as a mother or Fenris as a father, but together they’ve made it happen. Hot tears scald their way down her temples; as much as she feared telling him, now she wants nothing more.

Eyes closed, Hawke gropes for the golden thread binding them to each other, but it keeps eluding her. Whenever the thin strand of light twinkles at the corner of her eye, it slips back into the dark before she can hold it in her mind.

When she opens her eyes again, morning covers the room like a sheet of pound gold.

* * *

Help comes to her the next day.

“Walk with me,” Subira says, when the mages are allowed some free time after lunch. Most spend it napping, but a few head to the gardens instead, where a light breeze blows the refreshing spray of the fountain towards them.

The garden is nothing like Hightown’s topiaries and carefully manicured hedges. Here, the paving stones are a mere suggestion the plants are under no obligation of following. Bushes and blossoms spill into the footpath to tickle ankles as they pass, while flowering vines creep up the stone walls to brush the underside of the balconies ringing the tower. A nearby fig tree is alive with the song of a hundred twittering birds, and a handful of butterflies flap about in whimsical swirls, wings shining like jewels in the glare of the sun.

“Look, a rainbow!” Lathi exclaims, pointing at the shimmering spray. She holds Ser Clawsome aloft with one hand and makes him fly through the ripple of colours, narrating some fantastical tale to herself.

The cool mist of the fountain feels good on Hawke’s skin, and she turns her face to the spray for a moment, enjoying the fleeting relief from the Rivaini heat. Subira watches Lathi with an absentminded smile, the chain linking her nose and earlobe shining across the black skin of her cheek. The girl’s yells of laughter punctuate the otherwise calm afternoon.

Hawke breaks the ice. “I’m surprised even royals have to come to the Circle,” she remarks.

Subira looks at her like she just remembered she was there. “I was to train as a seer, then return to the palace to serve as Royal Enchanter,” she says, steering them towards a wrought-iron bench in the shade of a tree shaped like an open umbrella. “I used to go back to the palace quite frequently, too, before … _you know_.” Her eyes cut to the pair of Templars flanking the entrance to the garden, just far enough to be out of earshot. “What do you think they will do to us, Amabel? Will they kill us like in Kirkwall and the White Spire?”

Her soft, brown eyes are wide with fear. Hawke tries to think of something comforting to say, but after everything she’s seen, she knows better. “They’ve done it before. I wouldn’t count on them to exercise restraint.” One hand flies to Subira’s mouth; her gaze sweeps over the garden, blind with panic. Hawke clasps the other mage’s hand in hers. “Hey. Just don’t let your guard down.” Subira blinks at their linked hands, then nods after a second. “Do you believe Rivella has a plan?”

“I don’t know,” Subira says, then winces like the words were treasonous. “I mean, she must have. I trust her.”

“What about your family? Does the Queen know the Seekers have taken over the Circle?”

“She has to know. The Seekers’ arrival in Dairsmuid wasn’t exactly subtle.” Hawke can believe that. In her experience, the Chantry doesn’t do subtle. “But I don’t know what they’ve been telling them. The Seekers won’t even listen to me. They say I’m not part of the royal family anymore, that all worldly ties come loose once you pass the gates of the Circle. We’re all equals here, of course,” she adds quickly, “but family is family, you know?”

Hawke smiles. “Of course. Is there a chance the Queen might intercede in the mages’ favour?”

The breeze riffles through their hair, and Subira pushes back a few kinky curls bobbing in front of her eyes. “Her hands are tied. If she stands against the Chantry, it could mean anything from an end to trade to an Exalted March. Rivain doesn’t have an army”—her voice drops to an almost reverent hush—“or something like the Crows of Antiva. And if it came to war, _they’d_ be all too content to swoop in after the fact.”

“And swooping is bad,” Hawke agrees. Subira’s youthful appearance belies her astuteness, which she must share with the woman sitting on the throne, to keep the stability of her country balanced on the precarious edge of her allies’ interests. “I still don’t understand, though. You were allowed to come and go as you liked and summon spirits, yet you still have Templars and phylacteries?”

Subira throws sidelong glances on either side before answering. “Our Circle is small and removed from the rest of the country. Not a popular appointment for foreign Templars, from what I understand, and our own believe the same as we do. When a mage finishes their apprenticeship, their phylactery is simply returned to them to be dealt with as they see fit.” Subira links her hand around one folded knee, her foot dangling above the ground. “I never questioned these things growing up. I _wanted_ to be a mage. Prayed for it, in fact. When I came into my magic, it felt like a wish come true.”

Can’t relate. Hawke knew about magic, of course, the way all children know about darkspawn and demons and dragons: things that exist in the world, but that one might very well never encounter in their lifetime (lucky for her, she’s had close encounters with all three). If she was pleased to find out she was a mage, the memory is overshadowed by her mother’s endless litany of _Oh, Maker, please, no, not Amabel._ “I can’t say it was the same for me. Being a mage made everything so complicated. My father had to teach me in secret.”

“You weren’t taught in the Circle, then?”

“No. My father was Circle-trained, but he escaped to be with my mother. I lived my entire life as an apostate.”

Subira frowns at a butterfly fluttering about a spray of colourful blossoms. “Here, he would have been allowed to raise a family if he wanted. So could you,” she adds, turning to look at her. “We would never keep a child from its parents, mage or not. But for it they would brand us apostates.” She heaves a sigh and shakes her head, and a sad smile tugs at her full mouth. “I’m sorry, it was careless of me to bring this up.”

“It’s all right. I thought I was going to lose my mind keeping all those secrets.”

The princess watches her for a moment, a corkscrew curl bobbing in the breeze. “What is Fenris like, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Hawke lifts one eyebrow and one corner of her mouth. “You mean you’ve not read Varric’s sweeping epic about the Champion and her elven lover?”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Subira retorts, a grin lighting up her face. “But I’d like to hear it from you, if you want to share.”

Maker, where to start? Hawke could rattle off adjectives—honest, strong, loyal—but words seem like paltry things to encompass the whole of him. Somehow, what first comes to mind is his back, strong and solid as the steel of his sword, there to steady her every time she stumbles. “If you’ve read _The Tale of the Champion_ ,” she starts, “then you know I was forced out of Ferelden when the darkspawn struck. After the Gallows fell, Fenris and I traveled together for some time, but eventually I wanted to see what had become of Lothering with my own eyes.”

Subira watches her, listening. Hawke can still smell it, the stench of the darkspawn sticking to the roof of her mouth. The house where she grew up was just a collection of collapsed beams, blackened with corruption. Desiccated bodies hung from the arches of the Chantry, swaying in the wind like some macabre mobile. One tree in the orchard she’d so loved as a child somehow still grew fruit, and black frothing juice spilled from the leathery skin when she poked it with the point of her dagger.

The wind shakes the branches of the tree above them, tugging her back to Dairsmuid. A sprightly green scent chases the memory of darkspawn corruption, and specks of sunlight sway back and forth across the paving stones at their feet. A mage leans towards the fountain spray to splash some water at Lathi, sending her running with a squeal of delight.

Hawke takes a long, steadying breath. “I knew it was lost—a friend of my mother’s had sent a letter saying as much—but for some reason I needed to see it for myself,” she continues, wringing her hands in her lap. “But Fenris never complained or tried to talk me out of it. He walked with me halfway across Thedas just to see some ruins on a poisoned patch of land, and when we made it back to Redcliffe that night, he just held me while I cried.” She swallows, hard, and blinks the prickle out of her eyes. “That’s the kind of man he is.”

Subira follows a flock of birds with her eyes, then gives Hawke a watery smile. “I hope one day I find someone who loves me as much as he loves you. Do you think he will be happy to learn he’s going to be a father?”

“Yes,” Hawke answers. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but—no. She’s sure of it now. “Do you know what happened in the ritual room? When I went into the Fade?”

“You intend to go back, don’t you?”

No use denying it. “Fenris has risked his life for me over and over again, and now he’s the one who needs me. Rivella will never agree to send me back into the Fade, but I know I can help him find his way to the waking world. I just need to make my way back there.”

Subira nibbles on her bottom lip for a moment, then seems to come to a decision. “I think it’s the child.”

Hawke blinks. “What?”

“I think your child allowed your mind to cross into the Fade. We Rivaini believe that the closer you are to the world of spirits, the greater your power. That means female mages are thought to be more powerful than men, and elders not only have the most wisdom and experience, but as they age, they return to the Fade, little by little,” she explains. “Female mages have twice the power of creation: we can shape the world to our will, and we can create life. There are stories about pregnant mages whose condition granted them greater powers.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Hawke blurts out.

Subira glances at her through thick lashes, brown eyes glimmering. “With all due respect, you’d never heard of willful possession till now either.”

“Touché.”

“ _How_ it sent you into the Fade, though, I don’t know. The lyrium, perhaps, or the presence of N’na’s spirit.”

Hawke drops her gaze to her belly. She can still feel that thin, silver-gold strand connecting her to Fenris, somewhere across the diaphanous sweep of the Veil. Their child created the thread tying them together, as though it wants them to find their way back to each other. _You want your papa back, don’t you?_

“Thank you, Subira,” she says, clearing the haze out of her throat.

“Of course. And if you need help, just say the word,” Subira adds, her voice dropping to a whisper.

Lathi’s high-pitched yell rends the calm of the gardens. Ser Clawsome bobs on the surface of the pond, and Hawke only just has time to rescue the stuffed dragon before it sinks under the spray of the fountain. A spell leeches the water out of the fabric and returns the girl’s bright smile. Subira joins them, and together they walk along the paving stones of the footpath leading back to the tower.

As she watches a flower shiver under the weight of a butterfly, Hawke can’t shake off the feeling she’s being watched. The little hairs on the nape of her neck rise despite the heat, and she turns to see Lord Seeker Lambert staring down at her from one of the balconies overhanging the garden.

Defiant, she shields her eyes from the sun with the flat of one hand, and waves at him with the other till he looks away first.

* * *

The next day, Rivella deems her ready to attend her first lectures—to keep her busy, no doubt—but Hawke pretends to be afflicted by morning sickness, and spends the morning in one of the infirmary cots instead, under Ziyanda’s watchful gaze.

The hours crawl by. Hawke tries to will the healer out of the room, to no avail, and watches the slant of the sun grow steeper and listens to Ziyanda humming to herself as she brews medicine and scribbles down notes. Thankfully, she’s the only patient in the infirmary that day, and when at last the Chantry bell chimes noon, Hawke is finally left alone in the room—though not till she’s reassured Ziyanda that yes, she can handle being on her own for an hour and _please go have lunch already_.

Hawke counts up to a hundred before slipping out of bed, then gets to work. She opens every drawer and cabinet looking for the telltale pull of lyrium, checks every bottle and vial lining the shelves, but there’s not a single lyrium potion in the infirmary.

Maker damn it. She pokes her head out the door, then makes her way down the empty corridor. There’s bound to be lyrium stored in some of the lecture halls and laboratories, but Hawke doesn’t have the luxury of picking every lock in sight.

That leaves the stockroom.

The good news is, Elsa doesn’t seem to be around. Hawke sticks her nose into the small window in the door, but nothing stirs beyond the glass fogging up with her breath.

The bad news is that it’s locked too.

She’s just pulling her trusty hairpin out of her pocket when a voice shatters the quiet: “Do you need something?”

_Shit_. “Knight-Commander,” Hawke blurts out. The hairpin drops to the floor, but luckily Badr doesn’t notice. Her brain scrambles for an excuse; she pulls out her handkerchief and presses it to her mouth with one hand, and braces herself against the wall with the other.

“Maker, are you all right?” he asks, hurrying towards her.

Hawke dabs her brow with the handkerchief, then gives him a wan smile. “Oh, it’s nothing to worry about. I had these herbs to make a tea, but they ended up in a flower crown of Lathianni’s making.”

Badr nods, though concern still creases his brow. “Should you not be in the infirmary, then?”

“I didn’t want to make a fuss,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’ll pass soon enough.”

He smiles, then pulls a large keyring from his pocket and unlocks the stockroom. “Well, I’m not much of a herbalist, but we should be able to find what you need.”

Hawke stares at the open door. _Not_ how she’d planned for things to go. She gives him a tired smile above her handkerchief. “Thank you so much, Knight-Commander,” she says, her eyes flitting to the lightning scar running down the side of his face. “And … I apologize if I didn’t leave the best impression when we first met.”

That makes him chuckle. “It is nothing. I regret that your arrival in the Circle was so trying.” He ushers her inside the stockroom, then closes the door behind them. The same scent as before envelops them, hovering between fragrant and medicinal. Hawke finds it almost comforting, like when her mother would boil embrium to steam a bad cough out of her. “What did you say you were looking for?”

“Well, in Ferelden we call it mabari’s tooth,” she says to buy herself time, eyeing the crate of lyrium emitting its pale glow, “because of the leaves’ dented edges. I’ll know when I see them.” She points to the chair behind Elsa’s desk, doing her best to look like she’s about to expire. “I’m sorry, Knight-Commander, do you mind?”

“Oh, of course not,” Badr exclaims, and Maker damn it, why does he have to be so bloody _nice_? “Leave it to me.”

Hawke sits down hard on the chair. She needs a new plan, and _fast_. It’s not like she can open the crate of lyrium with the bloody Knight-Commander right there in the room, so Hawke gives a detailed description of the imaginary mabari’s tooth and rewards all Badr’s efforts with an apologetic shake of her head. When the hulking mass of his armour disappears behind a shelf of labeled vials, she carefully pulls the desk drawers open, hoping for a spare key. Of course Elsa couldn’t possibly be so remiss, though. Nothing in there but sheaves of parchment and vellum and a few spare quills.

She’s just sliding the last drawer shut when Badr returns, muttering under his breath. “I will go find someone. You—no, you just stay here,” he adds when she laboriously pulls herself to her feet. “I’ll be just a minute.”

And just like that, Hawke’s alone in the stockroom. She blinks, half-expecting Badr to jump back into the room to catch her red-handed, but his footfalls dwindle down the corridor, then vanish.

No time to waste.

She hurries to the glowing case of lyrium, but a sharp, smarting pain crackles up her arm the instant she touches the glass. A ward. A rune-encrusted mechanism of dwarven make sits on top of the lid, shadowed against the humming glow of the lyrium. A Templar could dispel it, and presumably the hand that wrought the enchantment in the first place, but Hawke has to figure this one out on her own.

She stamps down the urge to smash the glass case on the floor. She didn’t want to involve Subira, so she turned down the girl’s—far more sensible—suggestion of forging an Enchanter’s signature, but now there’s nothing she can do except glare at the case.

Except …

Except it _works_. Gold twinkles at the corner of her mind, and when she grasps for it, she can _see_ the magic folded into the mechanism, living tendrils of it coiled around the runes. Just like—just like when she was on the beach, with no idea how to heal Fenris till she _did_. The magic slips out of sight at the memory, but she clutches at the dimming strands of it, and the enchantment woven into the runes resurfaces in her mind’s eye.

Hawke works backwards to unweave it, just like unraveling a tangle of thread. It’s hard work, and a fork of lightning zaps at her fingertips at every misstep, but at long last the magic falls loose around the mechanism.

The latch comes open with a satisfying _clack_.

This time, the runes stay dormant when she pulls the lid open. A quick glance over her shoulder; Hawke wouldn’t have heard anyone over the blood thudding at her eardrums, but she’s still alone in the stockroom. She shoves two vials of lyrium into her belt, then grabs a third one after a moment of hesitation.

It slips out of her trembling grasp. She watches it drop to the floor like time slowed, expecting the spray of splintered glass and lyrium potion at her feet. But her embroidered slipper breaks the fall, and the vial rolls on the floor in a half-moon before coming to a stop, whole despite a hairline crack in the glass. She breathes a sigh of relief and shoves the vial into her belt with the others.

“Champion of Kirkwall.”

Her stomach falls to her slippers. She turns around to face Elsa, expression blank under the sunburst brand on her brow. No reproof on her face: just a calm curiosity, even as her pale eyes move from Hawke’s hands to the open case of lyrium. “How many did you take?”

An unnatural calm washes over Hawke. “Three. I need them to help someone. I promise no one will be hurt, unless you try to stop me.”

The threat slips past Elsa unacknowledged. The Tranquil woman peers into the glass case, then pushes the lid back down. The latch clicks back into place, and the hairs on Hawke’s arms raise as the enchantment comes back to life, the warding spell gently ruffling the Veil.

Then Elsa returns to her desk, where she retrieves her ledger and jots something down. “Whatever your plan is, I recommend you be discreet about it. Lord Seeker Lambert does not abide disobedience.”

Hawke blinks. “I thought the Tranquil did nothing except follow orders.”

She winces at the words that slipped out of her mouth, but of course Elsa isn’t slighted by the comment. “You defeated Knight-Commander Meredith and her Templars in Kirkwall,” she replies in that flat tone of voice. “It would appear that not standing up to you is more prudent now than obeying the Lord Seeker.”

Before Hawke can think of something to say, Badr returns to the stockroom, Ziyanda on his heels. “What did you say you were looking for?” the healer asks, casting her a cautious glance.

Hawke looks at Elsa, but the Tranquil mage is already back to her duties, watering can in hand. She musters a smile despite the wild thunder of her heart against her breastbone. “Oh, well, if you could just give me the same thing as last time, that’d be _great_ ,” she answers, pulling her handkerchief out of her pocket to dab at her upper lip.

Badr raises an eyebrow as Ziyanda hands her a simple sprig of embrium and a chunk of ginger root, but says nothing. Hawke thanks them both, and avoids the Knight-Commander’s gaze as she slinks out of the stockroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my attempt at making sense of the few crumbs of lore BioWare has given us about Rivain. The Circle of Dairsmuid is described as a façade to appease the Chantry, and I wondered where Templars and phylacteries would fit in the equation. We also know that Rivain is a matriarchal society, and I wanted to explore how that would fit in their culture and beliefs. I hope it made for an interesting read!
> 
> As always, thank you again so much for your patience and support! Lockdown and seasonal depression have been a hell of a combination, so I had to step away from writing altogether for a few weeks. I keep hoping for more regular updates (and hopefully I will get there!), but I’m trying to learn not to push myself too hard.
> 
> I hope everyone is staying healthy and warm! <3


	20. Isabela

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Knight-Commander Badr gives Isabela one simple task: take out a ship ferrying a contingent of Templars across the Bay of Rialto before they reach the Circle of Dairsmuid. The odds aren’t exactly in her favour, but Isabela still hatches a plan and gets ready to execute it.

So, Badr does have a plan, it turns out.

Whether it’s a _good_ plan, though, is up for debate: scuttle a ship full of Templar reinforcements sailing in from Ayesleigh at the Lord Seeker’s request. Oh, and do it without magic. _No mage can be involved_ , Badr told Isabela in that eminently reasonable tone of his. _It must simply look like a pirate raid gone wrong_.

The particulars he left to Isabela.

She asked if he’d lost his Maker-damned mind. She might’ve yelled a little, too, but under the circumstances it seemed pretty damned appropriate. None of it fazed the Knight-Commander. He sat there, calm as you please, waiting for the outburst to pass like you’d wait out the rain.

When she was done, he took an infuriatingly slow sip of rum, then said, “If you want to see Hawke alive, those Templars cannot dock in Dairsmuid.”

Not a threat. Just a fact. She put up some token resistance, but despite herself, a plan was already coming together in her addled mind. Pieces of the solution leapt from the jumble in her head, gathering like chips of iron to a magnet. Now alone in her cabin, she pores over her map of the Bay and the schedule Badr left next to his drained glass, studying the patchwork of the finished solution through the amber, shivering crescent of her own rum. It’s ridiculous and dangerous in equal measures, and she’s dying to do it.

All she needs is an extra ship. Lucky for Isabela, the _Fury_ ’s still anchored in the Bay, and she’s got an oxwoman to get back at.

“You need my ship to do _what_?” Kasra asks.

“Sink a templar ship,” Isabela answers lightly, trying not to look too much like she’s gloating. Which she is. Appalled is an interesting expression on Kasra’s face: her features seem unused to this particular configuration, and the golden rings of her irises pop even more against the black of her widened eyes. Not a look you get to spy every day on the fearsome captain of the _Fury_. “You’d have an easier time replacing the _Fury_ than repairing her, anyway. At least that way she’ll get a proper sending. A pyre, if you will.”

Kasra scowls. “Very funny,” she says through clenched teeth.

“And if you do that,” Isabela continues, resting her chin on her interlaced fingers and glancing up at her sweetly, “I _may_ be willing to move past the fact you left one of my friends for dead and tried to sell the other to the Chantry.”

 _Now_ she’s gloating. The grooves around Kasra’s mouth deepen. Almost no crew left to speak of, no ship, and no leverage. Isabela could end it here once and for all, pull out the knife tucked in her boot and flick it across the woman’s dark throat. But after drawing things out this long, her burning lust for instant revenge has simmered down. The idea of Kasra haunting taverns and bars all over the coast while everyone whispers about how the Queen of the Eastern Seas bested her sings sweet as songbirds in her chest.

Maybe one day she’ll rise again from the ashes, claim a new ship as her own and piece together another crew, but that’d take time. Watching Kasra’s jaw twitch while she visibly considers the same scenario is even more satisfying than getting to spill her blood.

“Fine,” Kasra finally says, leaning back into her chair and crossing her arms over her chest. “You win, Isabela. You get the _Fury_. And in exchange you never come for me or mine, and I’ll return the favour.”

“Deal.” Isabela stretches her hand out, and they shake hands over the charts strewn over the table. Kasra’s callused grip is firm, not at all like that of someone who’s just handed over her most prized possession. “Now if there’s anything stored on the _Fury_ you’d like to keep, I suggest you get it off her now.”

Which is how the _Pearl Oyster_ comes to acquire Greta the stuffed dragon, among sundry plunder and trophies. A strange addition to Isabela’s decor, to be sure, but the entertainment alone is worth it. From the mullioned windows of her cabin, she watches her crew haul the wobbling beast over the gangplank, claw-tipped wings cresting over the rail like an angry sunrise.

The door of her cabin opens and closes, and she reluctantly turns away from the action to face her quartermaster. “You called, cap’n?” Malik asks.

She reaches for the cupboard, but Malik gestures towards Badr’s empty glass instead and sits as she pours him a knuckle of rum. Then he listens, rubbing the waxed end of his mustache with two fingers between sips. True to himself, he doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t interject, simply waits for her to lay out the details before he can make sure the whole thing’s seaworthy. She comes up with the plans, he makes them happen: Malik was the first to give her a chance when she returned to Llomerryn still haunted by the ghosts of her first crew, and he’s helped her build her reputation from the ground up again, one bold plan at a time.

This one might be a little _too_ bold, though. Malik drains his glass, sets it down on the table with a sharp click, then says, “You realize that’s kind of insane, right?”

“But it’d work, right? And it’d be fun besides.”

“Oh, no doubt we can make it work. It’s the whole ‘going after Templars’ thing I’m questioning.”

Isabela examines her fingernails. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say. Besides, the boys could use some excitement, looks like.”

“The boys could use some coin, cap’n. We’re pirates, not mercs. The Bay’s full of merchant ships. Far easier catches than a templar ship, I reckon.”

“You damn well know that going after merchant ships won’t help Hawke,” she retorts.

“Figured as much. But no one wants to do your dirty work, much less risk their lives for it.”

“As if they didn’t all stand to gain,” Isabela scoffs. “If they want Hawke’s coin _and_ the Knight-Commander’s reward, we need her out of the Circle tower.”

Not a perspective Isabela relishes. Hawke’s always been much too generous with her coin, tossing silver and gold in beggars’ hands like sowing grain. Still, the idea of saving her friend only to demand reparations sits with her about as well as a fistful of sand down her smalls.

But whatever keeps her crew in line.

Malik’s not convinced. “That wasn’t the plan. No one even _knew_ she—”

“Plans change, all right?” Isabela snaps. Malik bristles, graying whiskers quivering, but says nothing. “We can find some other prize on the Bay while we’re at it, but we need to take that templar ship down.”

He crosses his arms over his barrel of a chest, and focuses a gray, gimlet eye on her for a moment. The brightening wedge of light accentuates the mangled, silvery line of an old scar on his shoulder. “And then what? I know you well enough to know that’s not all there is to it.”

“Just trust me on this one, Mal,” she pleads.

“Trust _me_ on this one, cap’n. You want me to sell the boys some pretty tale, I need the full picture first.”

Isabela sighs, and tangles her fingers in her hair. Outside her cabin, the cries of seagulls join her crew’s laughter. She’s so very tired all of a sudden. “Knight-Commander Badr wants to free the mages of the tower,” she admits, relinquishing the words like a handful of gold. “ _All_ the mages. If the Templars on that ship get there first, it’s game over.”

“Ah, so the job is to save Hawke and conveniently liberate the Circle of Dairsmuid while we’re at it. Gotcha.”

“Look, I don’t _care_ about the rest of the mages. If they manage to escape the Circle, too, then fair play to them. But all that matters is Hawke.” Isabela draws a breath, then blows it out again in a slow, steady stream, forcing herself to regain her composure by the time her lungs are empty. Then she laces her fingers together, and drops her chin over them. “Just get them in line. Like any damned job.”

Malik rubs a hand over his mouth. “I’m just telling you which side the wind’s blowing, Isabela,” he mutters into his palm.

Isabela gives him a wistful smile. Malik’s got her back, she knows, but there’s far more than just gold on the line this time. “I know. But come on, we’ve faced worse odds together,” she reminds him, trying not to sound like she’s begging. If she can’t get Malik to back her, then it’s all over. “Are you with me?”

Malik glances up at her, and his mustache twitches as he lifts one corner of his mouth. “Into the Void and you know it.”

The crew buys whatever Malik sells them. The novelty alone must get a few on board, and the rest fall in line at the prospect of pocketfuls of gold. No time to fix the mizzen and jigger of the _Fury_ , but the yards of the mainmast are replaced, and new sheets of canvas stretched overhead. Isabela wouldn’t trust her to last long on more turbulent waters, but the weather’s fair, and before long the shifting capstan bars groan and rattle as the anchor chain is hauled home.

With her belly now emptied, the _Fury_ cleaves forward at a good pace, and manages to keep abreast of the _Pearl Oyster_ despite her grunts of protest. The reek of smoke and burned pitch lingers ominously on deck, burning through the salt air to cling to the inside of Isabela’s nostrils. She misses her nimble little frigate within minutes, and repeatedly catches herself casting longing glances at the sleek silhouette of the _Oyster_ , currently captained by Malik. The _Fury_ has all the grace of a lame druffalo in comparison, but she can get them to their target, and that’s all that matters.

Thankfully, Badr’s schedule is correct. After spending the better part of a day surveying the shipping lanes in and out of Ayesleigh, Isabela finally spots their prey northwest: a black smudge on the moonlit horizon, seemingly immobile. In the lens of her spyglass, the Chantry’s wriggly sun ripples on the pennants; moonlight spills down the figurehead’s sword and shield, and the ship’s name—the _Aegis_ —shines in letters of gold leaf on the hull. Chantry never goes for discreet, does it? Probably think the threat of the Maker’s wrath will deter miscreants like her.

Unfortunately for them, Isabela puts little stock in the fate of her immortal soul.

At her word, the helmsman steers their course towards the black silhouette on the horizon. Malik’s twin commands ring out faintly from the deck of the _Pearl Oyster_ , and both ships push side by side into the wind. The _Fury_ changes course with some sickening lurches; Isabela finds herself clinging to the belay pins for support, but her remaining masts hold firm, and the cursory repairs keep her in one piece. Not much happening on the _Aegis_ , save for a lone sailor doing his rounds. The rest must be reciting the Chant below deck or whatever it is Templars do in their downtime.

The growing shape of the _Aegis_ now hangs at the end of the _Fury_ ’s bowsprit, directly forward. The wind’s with Isabela now, and by the time the Templars decide to do something about it, it’ll be too late. Little by little the distance shrinks between them, and the pale billowing sails of the _Aegis_ start filling the lens of her spyglass. More figures appear on deck. The crew’s getting nervous.

If this were some ordinary raid, she’d raise the black at this point, make them sully their smallclothes a little, but she lets them puzzle this one out a bit longer. A merchant ship and her escort in need of assistance? Pirates? Some deliberate maneuver or a simple misunderstanding? The same questions must be running through the captain’s head, and for a split second Isabela feels almost sorry for them.

They’re hailing her before long, but Isabela ignores all requests to identify herself. The captain then yells something lost to the winds, and ship hands scatter to their respective posts. The _Aegis_ bears off and lurches into the wind, but the _Fury_ has almost twice her running speed now. The wind whistles in Isabela’s ears and sends her hair snapping in the night; the bracing bite of the air now slips toothless off her skin, and she notices that she’s grinning, the wild, feral grin of a hunter ready to pounce.

“ _Now!_ ” Isabela shouts.

A handful of Antivan fire grenades is enough to set the _Fury_ aflame. The fire roars down the tar-caulked seams of the planks and races up the greased ropes of the rigging; Isabela takes the wheel while the rest of her crew lower the ship’s boat and escape. Aboard the _Aegis_ , some of the Templars have already donned those ridiculous pauldrons and helmets of theirs, expecting to be boarded, but realization dawns upon them as the flaming mass of the four-masted barque bears down upon them.

Too late.

The heat of the flames beats fierce against her skin, but Isabela steers the wheel till the last possible second, her grip white-knuckled around the smooth, polished wood. Somewhere beyond the flames, the deck of the _Aegis_ erupts in panicked screams.

“Cap’n!” one of her men calls out from the escape boat. Isabela runs up to the rail and vaults over it, just barely ahead of the flames. The Bay of Rialto seals itself over her, muting the whooshing noise of the conflagration and the shouts of the Templars. Sprays of froth tickle her limbs as she swims back to the surface, breaching again just in time to see the horned figurehead of the _Fury_ ram the hull of the _Aegis_ with a crack like thunder. The grappling hooks fitted to the yardarms claw at the _Aegis_ ’s rigging, tangling the two ships together. The fire leaps from one ship to the other, tearing through the sheets and lines, sending the sails flapping haphazardly in the wind like broken wings. One of the longboats hits the water, but a fire grenade sends its passengers diving overboard.

“Abandon ship!” someone screams. Crew and Templars alike leap from the burning _Aegis_. Some fumble with the straps of their breastplate and shed it just in time, but others meet the sea in full Templar armour, never to resurface.

The escape boat of the _Fury_ draws near, and Pieron stretches out one tattooed hand to pull Isabela aboard. She sits down next to him on the thwart and wrings the water out of her hair, watching the blaze clawing skyward. A mast snaps with a flurry of sparks, and the burning ships collapse into one another in a fiery embrace. Despite the distance, the heat pulses against her face like a heartbeat.

All men are equal at sea. The flaming sword etched on the Templars’ breastplate might scare mages, but on the water, it means nothing. They flail about the burning waves, clinging to drifting pieces of timber and struggling away from the conflagration. The longboats of the _Pearl Oyster_ have already been lowered onto the sea and now circle the survivors like sharks. Everywhere around them, men scream and beg for help or mercy, but Isabela’s crew make short work of the Templars, pulling them out of the water only to slide a blade across their throats. Loquita gets a few from a distance, her throwing knives whistling through the air before sinking home. Shouts and pleas turn into death gurgles, and soon the water runs red with more than just the scarlet glare of the flames dancing on the surface. Isabela dispatches a few herself, and watches as the last one sinks under the waves and vanishes in a red, bubbling froth.

She washes her daggers in the sea, then sits back down hard on the thwart. Scattered on the longboats, the faces of her crew are all turned to the flames. The water is quiet now, nothing but the whooshing noise of the fire eating through what’s left of the _Fury_ and the _Aegis_.

It was easy. Too _easy_. At least the crews of the Antivan and Orlesian ships they hunt get the choice _not_ to die if they cooperate. There’s a reason why Isabela stays far, _far_ from politics.

Dammit, Hawke.

“So, can we go back to being pirates now?”

Isabela turns to find Loquita glaring at her, her elf eyes glowing queerly in the firelight that bathes her heart-shaped face. “What, fireships not exciting enough for you?” Isabela retorts.

“You think some fireworks can distract us while you’re dragging us into one shoddy plan after another?”

The rest of the crew start rowing towards the _Pearl Oyster_ , doing a shit job pretending they’re not drinking in every word of the argument. Pieron has no such qualms, though. “Hey,” he says, the idiot. Probably thinks siding with Isabela publicly will earn him some goodwill. “At least we’re getting paid.”

Loquita glowers at him, her face dark with contempt. “Are we? Or do we have to jump through Maker knows how many hoops first?”

“Well, you should be good at that, then,” Pieron chuckles.

Not helping. “Shut up,” Isabela snaps, and he retreats into a dark, seething silence.

Anger mottles Loquita’s face now. For one split second she seems very tempted to deal him the same end her ringmaster met, but she finally forces her dark eyes back to Isabela. “I’m just saying. We get dragged back to ship at all hours of the night to go on wild chases, and now this?” A few murmurs of assent rise from the longboat, and Isabela’s jaw clenches at the sound. “You were gloating about Kasra’s shit decisions, but you’re not faring much better right now.”

Isabela crosses her arms over her chest. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t bring her into this. If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t even be here in the first place. I’m your captain, and you’d do well to remember that.”

“We _voted_ you captain, in case you forgot,” Loquita retorts. “That doesn’t give you leave to use us as muscle whenever you need it.”

Isabela only notices Malik’s longboat drawing closer as it slides abreast. “Just got to be patient a little while longer, all right?” he tells Loquita and the rest of the crew, his gaze catching Isabela’s. Just what he said would happen. “It’s done, and now we can decide on our next move. Maybe hunt us a fat little ship while we’re on the Bay.”

Isabela chews the inside of her cheek to keep quiet. Loquita relents, her bony shoulders dropping. “I’m tired of this, Mal. We’re wasting our time with this bullshit.”

“I know, but let’s get back aboard the _Oyster_ first, and then—”

A dripping shape hauls itself out of the water, and a flash of silver disappears into Malik’s chest. His gaze drops to the handle protruding from under his breastbone, a surprised grunt rattling in his throat. The Templar grabs him before sinking back into the sea, pulling Malik backwards, overboard and underwater.

Isabela’s on her feet before she even knows it, the bottom of the longboat wobbling under her weight. She leaps to the boat where Malik was seated not five seconds ago, then dives after him into the frothing sea. The rush of water and blood pounds on both sides of her eardrums, swallowing up her crew’s gasps and shouts. It’s too dark to see a thing underwater: only writhing shadows on one side and the warped mirror of the blaze on the other, dimmed through the fitful surface of the sea.

Something grabs her leg. Hope springs wild in her chest, but the metal of a gauntlet bites into her calf, and a faint beam of moonlight seeps into the water to illuminate the hard contours of a breastplate. Contempt twists the Templar’s features as he drags her deeper and deeper into the Bay. The water makes her movements sluggish, but she smashes her heel down onto the man’s face with as much force as she can muster. Fire fills her lungs; strands of hair slip into her mouth, and the taste of blood with them. Isabela chokes back down the urge to retch.

She’s not _dying_ here.

The Templar’s nose crunches under her foot. He finally lets go, dark streaks pouring out from the pulp she made of his face. He sinks deeper and deeper till he becomes a dark, indistinct mass, then vanishes into the darkness.

Isabela surfaces again, the salt air raking its way down her throat as her ears pop. No sign of Malik anywhere. She dives and dives again, calls and calls again, but nothing answers except the wind teasing out the waves and the smouldering remains of the two ships, cracking and popping like a bonfire. The Bay of Rialto’s claimed him, for good.

She doesn’t remember climbing back aboard the longboat, then the _Pearl Oyster_. The sail back to Dairsmuid is quiet, save for the hoarse, hollow ring of her own voice yelling out commands. Pieron hovers for a bit, then finally gets a clue and storms off. Loquita pretends she doesn’t exist, likely for the best.

The last person she wants to see is Kasra, so of course she’s the first person Isabela sees when she steps back into the Dairsmuid inn. Kasra hefts her head from her cups and stares at her from under heavy, swollen eyelids. The Qunari woman’s hard to miss in her lone corner of the almost empty tavern, and Isabela’s not sure whether she’s stayed up _really_ late or got started _really_ early.

“You’re back,” Kasra slurs, her gray skin flushed pink. “How did my _Fury_ fare on the water?”

“Without a hitch,” Isabela replies, all teeth.

“Yeah? That why you’re stomping louder than an ogre?”

For one delirious second Isabela’s tempted to sit with her and down what’s left of that liquor bottle on the table, but she catches herself just in time. She’s won, she reminds herself. “I’m not in the mood for this,” she says flatly.

A smile tugs at the corner of Kasra’s mouth. “Could be worse, you know,” she says, examining the dregs at the bottom of her glass like she was reading Isabela’s fortune. “Just think of me if you need to make yourself feel better.”

Isabela tries. Maker knows she tries. She forces herself to remember how smug, how gleeful she felt at the idea of Kasra being stranded without ship or crew, but that fire’s burned out now. Can’t even gather the leftover warmth.

She drags herself up the creaking staircase, closes the door of her room behind herself, then tries really, really hard to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s probably obvious that I love Black Sails if you’ve watched the show, but the fireship was pretty much directly lifted from [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1OfuaJjKyM). Fireships were a thing historically, although from what I gather they were mostly used to break up enemy formations rather than sinking one specific ship, but our favourite pirate queen does have a flair for drama. :D (And I suppose they could’ve just lobbed a couple of fire grenades at the _Aegis_ directly, but where’s the fun in that?)
> 
> Also: OMG WE’VE FINALLY HIT THE HALFWAY MARK. I really didn’t expect it’d take me thirteen months to make it this far, but I do hope I can get into a better rhythm now that I’m finally starting the climb down. The best is yet to come, in my humble opinion!
> 
> Thank you so much for your support and your patience, as always! A very happy new year and much love to you all! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Added 2021/02/03: I vastly underestimated the amount of work editing my rough draft would take, and 2020 did a number on my mental health and by extension, my motivation to work on this fic. I still intend to get it finished, but as is probably obvious by now I can't guarantee consistent or regular updates. I suggest bookmarking or subscribing to get notified when I get around to updating it. Thank you so, so much to everyone who's read and supported me until now. <3
> 
> -
> 
> I know this fic has quite a few original characters, so I put together a [dramatis personae](https://asaara-writes.tumblr.com/post/628108653990445056/the-far-shore-dramatis-personae) of sorts in case anyone needs a little refresher. I will keep it up to date as new characters are introduced.
> 
> Kudos and comments always welcome and appreciated! Come say hello on [Tumblr](https://asaara-writes.tumblr.com)! <3


End file.
